Simple Blessings

June 27th

2011-06-27T18:58:00.000-06:00

Today was another beautiful day. Peter is working nights this week, so he slept in a bit this morning. While he was sleeping I stripped all the beds other than ours, gathered up all the laundry, and climbed down the ladder to take it to the laundry room. Yep, we currently have a ladder going to our basement instead of steps. We're still in the middle of our basement renovations (we move slower than molasses!!) and the current project is the stairs. We've been using the ladder arrangement for over a week now and I am so ready for the new stairs!! Peter is predicting they will be in tomorrow, so I'm just going to hope that they're in by the end of the week, since I know how life can get in the way of the best-laid plans.

When Peter was ready to get up this morning I headed out for my run. Peter got me an awesome Garmin Forerunner 305 for my birthday. I must say it has definitely helped motivate me for runs. I can plan what I want to do for a workout, schedule it on my calendar in the software, then download (upload?) it to the watch before I go. Today I tried a 'negative split' run, where I tried to run the second half faster than the first. I did 5k total in just over 30 minutes. I noticed that 5k runs are now just the 'norm,' and I don't really feel too exhausted or sore afterward. Yay!

This afternoon we had a 'home visit' with the pre-Kindergarten teacher here in town. Apparently they've had more children register for pre-K this year than can go (unless they get 2 more kids registered - then they'll split the class), so we'll find out later this summer if he's going to be going in the fall. I really hate everything being up in the air. I am supposed to be doing my internship to finish my BEd this fall as well, but have not received placement information yet. I will be in touch with the university this week and if it's not settled by week's end I'll have to make a tough decision since it's not fair to the person I have lined up to babysit to cut it any closer.

We finally got to use some personal pizza pans that Mom had given Nathan for his birthday to make supper tonight. It came with a dough mix and a sauce mix, so it was easy to throw together (although it didn't compare to a real homemade crust). I took a picture with my phone, since I'm still waiting for the camera to arrive. I can tell that these pizza pans are going to get lots of use.

After supper we played a couple games of Candyland. I'm getting more and more concerned that Hannah doesn't know her colours. We've been trying to emphasize colours in various ways for the past couple of weeks and she still can't tell us even one colour correctly! Something to keep an eye on, I guess.

Well, time to get the last munchkin to bed!

June 26th

2011-06-26T22:06:00.005-06:00

by Trish Manuel Photography

Over the past couple of years I have steadily given up most of my tv watching. When Peter works nights I find myself looking for things to occupy my time after the kids go to bed :) Unfortunately I am not on a stitching kick at the moment. By the end of the day I'm usually too tired to engage in one of my other favourite pursuits - cooking - but I'm not too tired to surf and read endlessly online. So ... here I am. I'm working on organizing my photos tonight, as well.

Peter was fortunate enough to take a few months of parental leave this spring and we made the long trek home. We decided to drive, since renting a vehicle for 2 months was going to be really expensive!! The kids did amazingly well on the drive there and back, even though we were told countless times how crazy we were for attempting the drive with 3 kids.

We had a wonderful time at home. While we were there we did a ton of visiting, celebrated a bunch of birthdays, had a big family photo shoot! (see above photo), went hiking, ran a 10k with my sister and Dad, and Peter & I went to the Dominican Republic to celebrate our 10th anniversary (in August of this year)! I'm just in the middle of uploading the photos from the trip to flickr. Unfortunately I haven't taken many photos in the last month or so, as my camera ended up in the Caribbean sea when we were down south. I just ordered its replacement tonight so hopefully my photo-taking will resume within the next week.

Until next time ...

Looking to the week ahead

2011-02-06T19:26:00.003-06:00

I am feeling ready for the upcoming week. My kitchen is clean (a huge bonus) and chicken for tomorrow night's supper is almost thawed (I need to stick it in a marinade tonight). For some reason I feel like posting our menu plan for suppers for the week ... so I guess I will! lol.

Sunday: Hot Beef & Pasta on Caesar Salad
This is one of my favourites from Sandi Richard's Cooking For the Rushed: The Healthy Family. The recipe can also be found here. The only annoying thing about this recipe is that it uses 1/4 c of vegetable juice - something we don't drink in our house. Last week at Superstore I bought a 6-pack of small V8 cans so I used part of one for dinner. I might have been able to freeze the rest for future dinners but I was too lazy. Maybe I'll try with my next can. I love that this recipe has so many vegetables! The leftovers of the 'topping' for the salad I can eat as a full meal for lunch the next day, or I'll make fresh lettuce / caesar dressing and eat it as described again.

Monday: Chinese chicken, rice, steamed broccoli
My Mom makes super yummy chinese chicken wings about twice a year. They are very simple to make but growing up they were such a treat (probably because they taste so good!) Chicken wings are expensive and not very healthy. I've decided to try cutting up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts into wing-sized pieces and try marinating them in the sauce and cooking them instead. The marinade is just: 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup soy sauce, 1/4 tsp ginger powder, 1/4 tsp garlic powder. I imagine I'll have to cook the chicken less than I would wings ... the wings cook at 400 for 1 hour (covered), then at 350 for 30 minutes (uncovered). Not sure what I'll do for the chicken tomorrow. These taste better the more times they are reheated. So yummy!

I am terrible with rice, so once I found a recipe that worked I have continued to do it that way. It is also very simple. It can be scaled to any amount, but I usually do: 1 1/2 cups brown rice, 2 Tbsp margarine, 1 tsp salt. Combine in a casserole dish. Pour 3 cups of boiling water over rice and stir. Pop in a 400 degree oven (covered) for 1 hour. Voila! In the summer I'll do this first thing in the morning and then pop it in the microwave for 6 - 10 minutes right before supper.

And steamed broccoli ... pretty simple ;) I've been finding frozen broccoli has gotten really expensive lately so this summer, when fresh broccoli goes on sale, I'm going to buy a whole bunch, blanche it, and freeze it myself.

Tuesday: Baked salmon with dill-mustard sauce, roasted veggies (including potatoes)
This salmon recipe is my new favourite. My new goal is to have seafood at least once a week. I know this is nowhere near the current recommendation, but it's a start. I already have the sauce made for this from last time I made it, so it should be fairly simple.

For veggies I think I'm going to do some acorn squash, zucchini, and potatoes. It will be my first chance to try cutting up a squash since I got my new knives. I'm excited to see how they stand up!

Wednesday: Beef stew with biscuits
Would you believe I never had beef stew before I had it at Peter's house when we were dating? I guess my Mom didn't like it growing up so I didn't even really know what it was until we had it at his house. I really enjoy it every once in a while, and it's great on cold winter days, so it's on the menu for this week.

I do my stew in the slowcooker, so I'll probably toss the meat with some flour, salt, and pepper, then put it in the slowcooker. I'll add some carrots, onion, and potatoes (yes, I make a really simple stew). Then will come some water and half a package of Clubhouse's slowcooker stew seasoning. I discovered the seasoning package last year and I love it. It makes such a flavourful stew.

And here is the biscuit recipe I'm enjoying at the moment. I am notorious for always searching for new and better recipes, so who knows how long until I switch to a new one? I never keep buttermilk in the house so I just put a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice in a 1-cup measuring cup, then fill with milk and let stand 10 minutes. I'm sure everyone knows that trick, but just in case! Oh, and I always make the biscuits with half whole wheat and half white flour. I may try all whole wheat at some point but I'm worried they might not be as fluffy.

Thursday: Fiery pork skewers, rice, coleslaw
I love these pork skewers but kind of forgot about them until something brought them to mind last week. Since pork tenderloin was also on sale last week, I decided to add them to the menu. I'm already anticipating them eagerly. The other two parts of the meal are pretty self-explanatory.

Friday: Spaghetti, salad
Since I use bottled spaghetti sauce and boxed whole wheat spaghetti, this is my easy meal of the week! lol. And the ground beef is already cooked in the freezer.

Saturday: Pizza, salad
Homemade pizza on the weekend has become a tradition in our house this winter. Mostly because it is impossible to get a good takeout pizza around here! I enjoy Boston Pizza's or Pizza Hut's pizza, but both of those are an hour away. My current favourite pizza dough and sauce recipes ... For the sauce I usually use tomato paste (add a full can of water instead of just 1/4 c) and I simmer it for a while so it gets thick enough. We usually top our pizza with pepperoni (we've started buying the sticks and cutting it ourselves. It tastes so much better than pre-sliced!), bacon, ground beef, green peppers, mushrooms, and cheese. I saute my veggies before I put them on. Just a little of each of these toppings, though. Not a pound each like the crazy pizzas in town!

And ... that's what I'll be cooking this week. I love being in the kitchen, which is good considering I have to cook 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, for the foreseeable future :)

Stitching Progress

2011-01-26T21:19:00.005-06:00

I started a rotation (4 projects, 6 hours each = 24 hours of stitching time) in September and finally finished it on January 10th. I must have caught the stitching bug at that point because I just finished another rotation tonight - in 16 days! It helped that Peter had a stretch of night shifts in there, as I tend to stitch more (and stay up later) when he's working.

Here is what the pieces look like tonight. My last update is here.

Carousel (Theresa Wentzler)
Started: January 2007 (estimated at 206 hours completed)

I finally finished the horses!! I'm so excited about that. I got a small start on the bottom of the carousel but it will take a while. I'm already dreading the back stitching on this project ... ugh.

Celtic Summer (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 36 hours)

Still working on the dress. I think this piece will be my next finish. Not for a while, though. I still have an intricate border and the word 'Summer' to stitch after I finish the dress. Oh yes, and the beading.

Nativity - Centre Panel (Marbek)
Started: unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 36 hours)

I worked totally on the ray from the star this rotation. It's coming, but it is slow going ... and I still have to do the rest of angel #1 and the complete angel #2 before I get to the manger scene! Have I mentioned this is all on panel #1 ... and that there are 5 panels?? This piece may go in my will ;)

Dance of the Roses (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Feb. 2007 (?? + 36 hours)

Not much to say about this one. I am still working on her massive dress.

Back to stitching ...

January 26

2011-01-26T13:31:00.004-06:00

I've finally given up the desire to have a deep, structured blog, where I spend hours composing enlightening posts (haha!) ... that is just not feasible given where I am right now in life and all my other hobbies and interests. And, since most people just read this (I think) to learn what the kids are up to and to see pictures of them, it's probably not necessary.

So ... I'm stealing a few minutes of my free hour during the day (yes, there is one hour where all three are sleeping simultaneously - pure joy!) to type a quick update and share a few pictures.

As I mentioned in my last post, we have taken Nathan skating a few times. Well, actually, Peter usually takes him and I stay home with Hannah and Abigail. It was warm enough a couple of weeks ago that we took all three kids out. Abigail was under a blanket in the sled, so I didn't get a picture of her, but here are pictures of Nathan and Hannah (she just wore her boots).

I have pictures of the two of them side by side on the ice, but they are both crying, so I figured these were better.

And ... for good measure, a picture of Abigail

I can't believe Abigail is going to be 4 months old in a few days! It doesn't really seem possible. I have to dig out the high chair in the next little while. I think she would enjoy sitting in it while we eat our meals, and it won't be long before she'll be eating some cereal herself. *sniff, sniff*

I am working on tweaking the kids' schedules a bit. I finally have been trying to follow a consistent schedule with them but, of course, there were a few things that weren't working after my first attempt. As soon as I finish this post I'm going to head over to Excel to get it updated and hope that the changes work well. I find our days go so much more smoothly when we are at least trying to follow some sort of routine.

Peter and I are planning a trip south this spring to celebrate our 10th anniversary (coming up this August!). We are having lots of fun reading all about different resorts and the pros and cons of different locations and amenities. I'm getting so excited to go!

On the weight-loss / healthy living front I have run twice so far this week. Unfortunately I am dealing with some minor shin splints so I didn't run yesterday even though it was scheduled. They seem to be getting better and I am going to be very strict about not increasing my mileage more than 10% per week. That means I'm aiming to run 11 miles this week ... so far I've done 6.35 and have two more runs scheduled. Definitely attainable.

Well ... as Bugs Bunny always says ... 'that's all, folks!'

Wow - time for an update!

2011-01-24T13:29:00.002-06:00

There are not enough hours in the day lately to get everything done, and this blog definitely gets pushed to the bottom of the list! So ... here's a quick recap of what's been happening in our household.

Nathan
Nathan was so much fun this Christmas!! It was the first year he really started to anticipate that something exciting was happening, and we had a million questions about how Santa works. Fun, fun! Of course, the day after Christmas he started asking when next Christmas is.

Nathan got a hockey net for Christmas and when it's not too cold Peter takes him outside to play street hockey in the driveway. Nathan has also been learning to skate a bit. He can go short distances on his own.

We have started doing some letter tracing recently with Nathan, too, and he loves it. I can only hope his love of learning continues once he starts school!

Hannah
We are currently weaning Hannah from the soother, at least during the day. Until last week she would have it pretty much 24/7 and I was starting to worry it was going to hamper her speech development. I needn't have worried, though. Hannah is a born talker. She is learning new words every day and it is so much fun to hear her try out new ones.

Hannah also started walking in the last few months ... finally! She does pretty well, but still falls multiple times every day.

I struggle to find things for Hannah to do during the days. Sometimes she enjoys playing with stickers, but other times she has no interest in them. I'm going to have to make some new play dough soon.

We have just started keeping Hannah with us for the first part of the church service. We did this with Nathan right from birth, but it was harder with two. However, I feel it's so important both from a spiritual perspective and to teach them to sit quietly.

Abigail
Abigail is such an easy baby! She started sleeping through the night around 6 weeks old and just spoils me. She actually woke in the night a few nights ago and I think I was in shock. She is a skinny little thing. At her 2 month appointment she was 23" long and only weighed 9 lbs, 12 oz. The nurse wasn't concerned about her slow weight gain - she said it's in her genes to be tall and skinny. She has very long feet, so maybe the nurse is right!

Abigail rolled over 2 weeks ago, and has done it a few times since. She loves to suck her thumb and often when I go to wake her from her naps I find her in her crib, already awake with her thumb in her mouth. I'm not allowing myself to think about how difficult it could be to get her to stop, and just enjoying not having to constantly search for soothers.

Health and Fitness
Both Peter and I have been trying to eat better (well, this is mostly on my part since I prepare all our meals! lol) and exercise, but for opposite reasons. Peter is trying to gain, and I'm trying to lose weight. Trying to work exercise into our daily routine does make for hectic days, but it's paying off.

I'm not sure how much weight Peter has put on, but I'm 2 lbs below my pre-pregnancy weight at the moment and trying to lose another 13 lbs before

....

we head somewhere warm for a trip to celebrate our 10th anniversary! Our anniversary isn't until August, but we're going to go this spring. I am so excited to have a week away, just the two of us!

So ... that is a quick summary of where we are now. I won't promise another post anytime soon, but I will try and find a few minutes every week (and next time I'll try to do pictures!)

Back in the saddle ... err ... sneakers

2010-11-18T11:54:00.003-06:00

Now that Abigail is 6 weeks old (eeks!) I've started back into my walk to jog plan. I'm getting very tired of having to start over every year after having a baby. Hopefully that will not be a problem again for at least a few years!

I'm currently on week 3 of the program and, as in the past, I find it increases at just the right pace to allow me to keep up but still be challenged each time I get on the treadmill. With the snowy weather lately and the imminent arrival of winter, I'll be running inside for the next several months, so I just decided to start on the treadmill. Besides, it's kind of embarrassing to go outside when you're walking for 4 minutes and running for just 1.

I bought some new sneakers at a specialty store a few weeks ago and they are great. The last two pairs of sneakers I had used for running I did not love, but these ones are very comfortable. I have to make sure I only allow myself to wear them for running so I don't wear them out too quickly! I'm hoping to pick up another pair after Christmas just so they won't be discontinued by the time I look for them again.

Peter is trying to get some running in lately as well and we think we might sign up for a 10k in the spring somewhere. I've only ever run in one 5k event, so a 10k would be a challenge but should be reasonable. It will be fun to train 'together' even though our runs will have to be solo so someone is home with the kids.

My interim goal (in the absence of a race) is to be able to run 3 or more times a week for 35 minutes at a time by the end of January. I don't want to start too quickly as I've had plantar fasciitis in the past and don't wish for it to return. I typically run at 10 min / mile so that will be my goal for those workouts. Once I get there I can start to increase the distance and speed - yay!

Bathroom renovation - complete (almost)

2010-11-04T18:50:00.000-06:00

This update is a bit late, but we finally finished the bathroom renovations in time for all our company to arrive. In fact, Peter's even done quite a bit of work on the downstairs bedroom, but that's for another post.

During the last update, we had the walls primed, the shower half-installed, and no sink or toilet. Since then we have installed a sink and toilet, painted the walls, and finished installing the floor. Voila!

Here is a list of what's left on the bathroom. I would really like to get these items checked off as soon as possible:

Doorknob (bought but not yet installed)
Touch up paint on trim
Last few tiles by door (waiting to hear from flooring expert whether we should wait until laminate is laid in hallway)
Mirror (still need to purchase)
Install towel racks and toilet paper holder (bought but not yet installed)

Halloween

2010-11-02T21:10:00.003-06:00

This was the first Halloween that Nathan was excited to go out trick or treating. Seeing his anticipation of this makes me even more excited for Christmas this year. He's going to be so much fun!! Peter took him out to some houses on our street on Sunday afternoon before work. Nathan has been so good with his treats. Every time I say he can have one, he picks one out and says, "This is the one I want to share with Hannah." I am one proud mama when I hear that! (He's not always so kind to his sister - that is our biggest area of discipline with him right now ...)

Nathan also helped carve the pumpkin this year. I still couldn't get him to touch the pumpkin 'guts,' though! Our poor pumpkin just could not rival those of previous years - the pumpkins here kind of suck compared to those back East ... sorry prairie friends, but it's true. I thought about asking my sister to smuggle one out in her suitcase earlier in the month, but I thought that might be a bit much to ask ;)

Oh, and Nathan was a fireman this year. In case it wasn't obvious from the pictures.

Settling in to life with three

2010-10-29T21:27:00.004-06:00

Abigail will be one month old in a few days. That is definitely hard to believe, but we are settling in well to life as a family of 5. Abigail is still doing really well. She is usually only up once a night and just eats and goes back to sleep.

Life is very busy, of course. I do find that I'm coping better than before Abby was born. I think it's because I felt so wretched when I was pregnant that I feel like I can take on the world now that I'm getting back to my old self! I carefully guard my evenings after the kids are in bed, but I am managing to keep the main areas of the house tidy most of the time and have even managed to scrub some floors this week.

I am starting to think about Christmas. We have picked up several gifts for the kids and have ideas for some more (we're still looking for ideas for Hannah ... anyone?). This week I wrote a draft of my Christmas letter and ordered our Christmas cards along with an extra picture of Abigail to include in the envelopes. This weekend I'm hoping to print off address change cards to include in the Christmas cards and to make sure I have all the addresses I need. The cards should arrive early next week and I want to get them all addressed by the end of next week. We have company arriving at that point so I would like to have that big job out of the way.

I have a goal to lose all the baby weight by Christmas. It's definitely a reasonable goal if I can keep myself away from the Christmas baking! I have about 15 lbs left to go. I can't wait until after my 6 week appointment so I can start a walk-to-jog plan ... again.

And ... in the past week I've gone through all our baby boy and girl clothes and all of my clothes (maternity and non-maternity). The boy clothes have gone to friends, the girl clothes are all well-sorted, labeled, and back in storage, and only clothes I like are in my drawers and closet. I feel so productive and would like to continue on this decluttering streak. I think toys and kitchen stuff would be the next logical places.

I'm also back into menu planning and have a plan for lunches and suppers for the next couple of weeks. So much less stressful!

Well, that's about all I can think of for this random update. Time to go put a pot of coffee on for Peter ... he's working nights tonight.

Welcome Abigail Elizabeth!

2010-10-12T11:26:00.006-06:00

Abigail Elizabeth was born on October 2nd, 2010, at 11:53 p.m. She weighed 8 lbs, 4 oz, and was 21" long.

This labour experience was very different from my last two as we were in a different province (thus different hospital) and we are now an hour from the hospital where she was delivered. I had made it to over 39 weeks pregnant (longer than either of my other two pregnancies), was very uncomfortable, and was definitely ready to have a baby. We hadn't found out if we were having a boy or a girl (although I was convinced we were having a boy) so that added an element of excitement to going into labour.

Peter had gone to work for 8 p.m. on Saturday night, with a strict admonishment from me to keep his phone on him ;) I had been reminding him of this for over two weeks, though, so I don't think he was too worried. I started contracting right after he went to work so I laid down, thinking that would stop any false labour. Instead, about 5 minutes after I laid down, I felt my water break (for anyone who's curious, to me it feels like someone plucked a guitar string in my stomach). My water had broken on its own with Nathan so I was pretty sure that's what happened even though I didn't have the waterfall I had with him. This was around 8:45 and the contractions immediately went to lasting for about a minute every three. I called Peter and the people who were set up to watch Hannah and Nathan, and started to pack my bag and the bag for the other kids. Yes, I hadn't really packed yet. Silly me.

Peter got home around 9 and we were on the road by 9:15 p.m. He did the hour's drive in about 40 minutes and we walked into the hospital just before 10. I was still having contractions about every 3 minutes. We got to the delivery room and I got hooked up to the monitor. The nurse said she could see that I was having lots of contractions but that the test on whether my water had broken was inconclusive.

I told the nurse I wasn't interested in an epidural during her questions. She checked me and I was at 5 cm ... still halfway to go. I was really tired (maybe because I looked after 2 kids all day and then decided to go into labour??) so I quickly told the nurse I had changed my mind. She checked me again (about 20 minutes had passed) and I was already at about 7 cm. Since I was progressing so quickly she told me I wasn't able to get any drugs ... yikes! This hospital didn't have my favourite fentanyl ... I knew this going in but didn't realize my drug choices at this hospital would end up having me do a drug-free labour and delivery.

By about 11:45 p.m. I was ready to push. By this point I was exhausted and didn't have a great amount of energy to push, so I was very glad that it only took 3 pushes for her to be born. She was born at 11:53 p.m. - definitely my shortest labour by far! They placed her on my chest but I still didn't know that she was a 'she'! I asked Peter if she was a boy or girl and when he said girl I thought he might have been teasing me - I was that sure she was a boy! lol. Of course I was / am overjoyed to have another little girl to love.

Abigail is 2 weeks old today and she is definitely the easiest baby of the three I've had. She can put herself to sleep (not always, but some of the time), is usually only up once at night, and is generally very calm when she's awake. The public health nurse expressed surprise at being able to do all her checks on a quiet baby. She really is amazingly calm. It will be interesting to see how her personality develops.

Nathan and Hannah have adapted well to another baby in the house. Hannah is just about ready to walk and has been a bit out of sorts, but that's to be expected. She's just now starting to get back to her old self. Nathan has been great with Abigail - he loves to give her kisses and hugs and wants to read to her. So sweet!

We are so thankful for another healthy baby and are looking forward to the privilege of having her as part of our family :)

It's fall ... back to stitching

2010-09-26T20:48:00.005-06:00

I went looking for my last stitching update and found this. I am pleased that my stitching has picked up now that fall is back. Once the baby is born, though, I'm sure it will slow down considerably!

Here are updated progress pics ...

Carousel (Theresa Wentzler)
Started: January 2007 (estimated at 194 hours completed)

At least I can see progress between this picture and the last. I can't wait to be done the horses!

Celtic Summer (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 24 hours)

I finished the front swirly part of her dress. I still have to fill in the gold but I will do that near the end.

Nativity - Centre Panel (Marbek)
Started: unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 24 hours)

This piece does not photograph well at all :( This was my second rotation working with a copy of the pattern so I could highlight as I finish sections. I worked on some of the star this rotation and can see that highlighting is going to be a huge help in the sections using blending filament.

Dance of the Roses (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Feb. 2007 (?? + 24 hours)

I felt like I made good progress on this one this rotation. Having the rose ribbon as a delimiter really helps my motivation.

Still here ... still pregnant

2010-09-24T22:22:00.002-06:00

After several unproductive months, the past week I have been actually getting things accomplished! My house is presentable, I have a few meals and a dozen apple pies in the freezer, there are no science experiments in my fridge, and we even did a bit of yard work today. Unbelievable!! Some people are saying it's nesting, but I think it's been going on too long to be that. I am attributing it to actually making and using a to do list every morning. It's been almost magical! The only thing I haven't really done off my to do list this week is pack my hospital bag. It makes me laugh.

I am going to the doctor every week and he seems confident I won't go overdue. My next appointment is this coming Tuesday. Tuesday also marks the date in my previous pregnancy where I went into labour with Hannah (Nathan would have been born last Friday). In other words, I've never been pregnant longer than next Tuesday so we'll see what happens. I am not feeling like labour is imminent, but I didn't with Nathan or Hannah either. For some reason I think I might have the baby late next week.

The kids are still having a tough time going to sleep in the same room. More often than not we end up moving Hannah either to the crib in the nursery or to the pack 'n play in our room after fighting with them for an hour. *sigh* Oh well, they'll get it eventually.

Peter's been working steadily on the bathroom ... pictures and post to come soon! I've also been doing more stitching now that fall is here ... again, pictures and post to come soon.

Pregnancy Summary - Week 36

2010-09-09T08:00:00.002-06:00

I finally have another real belly pic to post, and what a belly it is! I am definitely ready to have this baby at any point.

As has become customary, I got my final hair cut and colour before the baby today. It's such a 'pick-me-up,' something that is definitely needed at this point in the pregnancy! Unlike when I was pregnant with Nathan, though, I kept a bit of length in my haircut. I realized after I saw the pictures from when I had him that a chin-length haircut only emphasizes how puffy my face is at the end of a pregnancy, so I've kept it long while pregnant every since. Vanity, vanity!

I had my 3-hour glucose test and the results were fine - yay! I don't care so much at this point about what gestational diabetes would mean for the pregnancy / baby, as we are so close to the end, but I know that having it would put me at a higher risk for Type 2 diabetes later in life so I'm glad I've avoided that.

I saw the obstetrician again yesterday and everything looks good. We had a bit of a scare when he went to find the heartbeat with the Doppler and couldn't. That is so unusual at this point in the pregnancy that it had me pretty scared! Thankfully he has an ultrasound machine in his exam room so we just took a quick peak and he used that to measure the heart rate (128 ... definitely supporting my suspicion of boy).

The doctor told me he won't let me go much past 40 weeks. I'm still counting on going early since I haven't made it to 39 weeks with either pregnancy. He also said he doesn't like to have women in labour for too long (he used 50 hours as an example), but since my previous ones were only 9 and 7 hours I don't foresee that being a problem, either.

I did find out about their on-call schedule. He said he is on call 24/7 every second week and that he delivers all of his patients who go during regular business hours. It works out to about a 75% chance that he will do the delivery. Since I've never had my own doctor deliver before I'm not too worried.

I can't believe it's almost time to meet this baby!! We've moved Hannah out of the nursery but I still haven't gone through and found my infant clothes. That is definitely something that has to be done this week. Oh, and packing hospital stuff. So much to do ... hopefully so little time ;)

Homemade fun

2010-09-03T08:00:00.003-06:00

This has been the scene at our house for several hours over the past week. Nathan's playdough had all been mixed together and much of it had dried out. So ... being the lazy (didn't want to load both kids up and go out) and cheap (didn't want to spend the money) person that I am, I decided to try making them some playdough. Many of the recipes I found online required alum, which I don't have in my cupboards, so I finally settled on this recipe, from here:

Nature's Playdough

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
beet, spinach, and carrot juice

Mix flour, salt and oil, and slowly add the water. Cook over medium heat, stirring until dough becomes stiff. Turn out onto wax paper and let cool. Knead the playdough with your hands until of proper consistency. Use as is, or divide into balls and add a few drops of the vegetable juices to make green, pink, and orange.

I did not have beet, spinach, or carrot juice readily available, so I used some of my icing dyes instead. They made wonderfully vibrant shades of play dough. I was worried the colour might rub off when played with, but it doesn't!

I've played with many sticky batches of homemade play dough over the years but this dough is awesome. It feels very much like the stuff from the store, although it smells a bit worse. Oh well. The kids have had it out pretty much every day for the last week and it's still as good as new. The recipe is definitely a keeper!

Hannah - 17 month summary

2010-09-01T08:00:00.003-06:00

Mmmm ... warm chocolate chip cookie!

Hannah continues to understand and follow simple directions. She has also started to point to body parts when asked. The ones I've seen her do consistently are nose, mouth, and toes. I think of her as younger than she is because she is not walking, but I forget that her cognitive development is right on track.

Hannah has added a couple of recognizable words (to Peter and I) this month. One is 'giraffe' (her favourite stuffed animal), 'doggie', and 'soo-soo' for soother. I can't remember off the top of my head if there are any more. She gets frustrated when she can't communicate what she wants. An example of this is when Mom and Dad were here earlier this month they gave her orange juice with her breakfast. Well, she doesn't like juice but couldn't quite communicate that. She was cranky all through breakfast until we managed to figure it out. Then she was happy as a clam. I'm hoping that her volatile moods will calm a bit once she is able to get around better and communicate her wants.

Hannah still has her soother. I'm still not happy about it, but there are other changes that need to happen before I can work on it. Within the next week we will be moving Hannah into Nathan's room. It should be interesting, to say the least. Since she is still not very old we will just put a crib mattress on the floor in his room for her to sleep on. If that doesn't work she will have to use the pack 'n play. I'm cutting this transition very close with the baby's due date less than 6 weeks away, but time sort of slipped away from us!

Hannah has made strides toward pulling herself up this month - finally. Even after Nathan was walking he couldn't really get himself to standing very easily for a few months. I think Hannah is going to be the opposite - I think she is going to learn to stand and then cruise, then walk (like most children, I think). Hopefully this will mean less walking around with her holding our hands - that is tiring at 8 months pregnant!

Hannah is definitely down to one nap now. Some days are longer than others - anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 1/2 hours. Her bedtime has moved a bit earlier as well. She is usually in bed and asleep before 7 now.

Hannah got more teeth this month. I think she is up to 11. She loves meat, unlike her brother, and the extra teeth are really helping her chew.

I almost forgot to add that Hannah is finally doing independent playtime consistently!! She is still in the crib (which is going to be tricky when we move her to Nathan's room), but she will do 45 minutes relatively happy. Hopefully when we move to Nathan's room she will play in there happily and Nathan can play downstairs ... if I can get it cleaned up enough. Ugh.

I think that's it for this month. Other than the room transition we won't be too ambitious with teaching skills until after the baby is here.

A Long Obedience ...

2010-08-30T08:00:00.003-06:00

I have a confession to make, and hopefully putting it out here will make me accountable to do something about it. My devotional life has been very much lacking since Hannah was born last year. Since then I've had a hard time settling into a routine, something that I find very important in order to keep up a consistent quiet time, and with another baby on the way I am worried that it will only become worse. Soooo ... I've made it my goal that by next year at this time this will no longer be something I struggle with. I will have a consistent quiet time and it will be something I look forward to with anticipation most days (I could say all days, but I know that's unrealistic).

I wanted to choose a motivating devotional book to pair with Scripture to get me started. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, by Eugene Peterson, is a book I have turned back to multiple times over the years. I bought it when I went to Urbana in 2000, and since the topic obviously relates to my current struggle I'm planning to start with it. If I remember correctly, each chapter deals with one of the ascension psalms (not sure if that is what they are actually called) that the Israelites would sing on their way to Jerusalem. Again, I'm a bit fuzzy on the historical details, but they are laid out in the book so they should become clear again within the next few days :)

I'm going to pick up a new journal this afternoon and get started. I'm still unsure of the best time, but I'm going to try scheduling it for early afternoon. Right after Hannah goes for her nap and Nathan goes for his rest time I'll plan to have my quiet time. I think one of my roadblocks has been that I have this vision in my head that I want to have my quiet time first thing in the morning. Ideally, that is true, and I've always had this notion of getting up before my kids and them waking up and finding me in my quiet time. However, at this stage in my life and given my personality and Peter's work schedule, I really have to give up on this bit of perfectionism and realize that it's more important to actually build my relationship with Christ than to worry about what time of the day I am devoting to quiet meditation. Since Hannah's nap happens at the same time 99% of the time, I figure it's one constant in our schedule that I can count on.

Nathan - 3 1/4 year summary

2010-08-28T08:00:00.004-06:00

Wow, I just looked back at my 3 year summary of Nathan and it was very detailed! I doubt this one will be as long-winded, but I only have to cover 3 months instead of a whole year this time.

Nathan has adapted very well to our new town and new way of life. He loves when Daddy is home in the day to play with him. His favourite activities with Peter are wrestling and hockey. Could he be a more typical boy? I have really seen his sense of adventure and his willingness to take risks expand this summer. I think it's healthy and most of the credit for this goes to Peter, too. I tend to be really nervous when he tries new things (like climbing monkey bars) but Peter encourages him to try.

Potty training is still going well. He has very few accidents overall and tells us more often than not when he has to go. Unfortunately he still can't get up on the toilet or pull his pants up very well without us. He can get his pants and underwear off, so that's progress.

Nathan continues to test his boundaries, but I do think he is obeying a bit more than he was 3 months ago. That may just be wishful thinking on my part, and he still oversteps his boundaries with Hannah more than I would like, but he seems to be playing better with other children.

We tried putting Nathan in swimming lessons this summer. We started out with a class where he would go in by himself. He can touch in the shallow end of the pool and loved swimming with Peter and I, but when it came time to go in with his class he screamed and cried very hard. We tried every morning for a week to get him to go with his class, even going so far as getting in the pool with him, but he would not budge. Halfway through the two-week session we switched him to a class where I got in the water with him. Although the content of the class was a bit below him (it had kids from 6 months - 3 years old in it), he did much better socially.

His swimming skills have dramatically improved over the summer. With Peter's schedule and the close proximity of the pool to our house, we have taken the kids to the pool many, many afternoons this summer. Nathan has become a little fish. He loves to go underwater and even enjoys challenging us to see who can stay under the longest. He can do a front float and will open his eyes underwater and has started trying to do a sort of doggie paddle when Peter prompts him. I think the next thing he needs to work on will be a back float ... probably next summer. We will try swimming lessons again next summer, too, and hopefully they will go better.

We also enrolled Nathan in a local VBS (not the one at our church as it was for ages 5 and up). He went with one of his best friends and the first day was rough. Peter ended up staying the whole time. The second day I went with him and stayed, but was out of sight for about 90 minutes out of the 2 hour timeframe. Wednesday he stayed on his own but by Thursday Nathan was really tired. I think all the 'new-ness' was really exhausting for him and he just broke down when we got there on Thursday afternoon. We ended up coming home after the opening time on Thursday and then he stayed on his own on Friday afternoon. I'm glad he did a few days on his own. It gives me hope for him in the future!! I see so much of my own reticence and shy nature in him it's scary. I really hope it's something he can overcome as I am only too familiar with the limitations it places on a person.

We have gotten out of any kind of structured learning time for Nathan this summer. It is something I want to start up again, though, so hopefully with fall right around the corner I can get myself organized.

Nathan seems to be excited about the new baby. He will often come up and hug or pat my belly and say what the baby is doing inside my belly. It is really cute. I hope he's as excited once the baby gets here!

One of Nathan's new favourite words is 'irritating.' A strange word for a 3 year old (and he often uses it incorrectly), but it must be something Peter or I say with some sort of regularity. There's another one, too, that I can't think of right now.

Nathan is no longer napping. It was a fairly easy decision once he started laying awake in bed until 9 or 10 every night. As soon as we cut out the naps he started falling asleep promptly at bedtime (somewhere between 7 and 7:30). I found it really stressful when he was taking so long to fall asleep at night, so losing the afternoon time is worth it to me. He still has 'rest time' in the afternoon, where he can take a few toys and books into our bed for an hour. He seems to enjoy that time to unwind and it gives me a chance to rest, too. The reason he is in our bed is because very soon (within the next week) he and Hannah will begin to share a room. Since Hannah is (obviously) still napping in the afternoon Nathan has to have his rest time elsewhere.

To work on in the next three months:

Establish at least 30 minutes of learning time per day, 5 days a week.
Teach Nathan to undress and dress himself. It may not be perfect but it's something I've been slacking on.
Establish a few (maybe 3) daily chores that he is responsible for. At the moment I'm thinking - making his bed, brushing his teeth (in the morning - we do it at night), and tidying up his room before bed.

Pregnancy summary - Week 34

2010-08-26T08:00:00.004-06:00

I know I don't look very happy in this picture, but at least it's a recent one that shows how massive I'm getting! I am always surprised by how big I am by the end of a pregnancy. I think I'm just concentrating in this picture - hence the serious expression.

I've seen the obstetrician twice since my last update. I really like him so far. I haven't asked how they work delivery schedule so I'm not sure what my chances are of him actually delivering the baby.

At my appointment yesterday I hadn't gained any weight (yay!!). I am still within the recommended 25 - 35 lb weight gain range. I think I gained about 70 lbs with Nathan and 50 lbs with Hannah, so I am feeling really good about this so far. I really wonder how much moving to the small town has helped - both with the amount of walking we've been doing and with the limited selection of unhealthy restaurants (the only chain fast food restaurant in town is Subway). I ate at McDonald's in the city yesterday since my appointment was at noon and it didn't even taste good. Could I have broken my addiction? Haha. We'll see. I wonder if there are any places to live that don't have access to diet coke ...

My blood pressure was good (120 / 70), so nothing to note there. The doctor did an ultrasound in his office and it was so neat. He said I wouldn't be able to see as much as I could at the 20 week ultrasound but I think he meant as far as getting the overall picture of the baby. I'm terrible at interpreting ultrasound images anyway, so I found the one yesterday much more informative than the earlier one. The doctor showed me the spine, heart (very cool to see the 4 chambers), kidneys, and face. He also measured the baby's abdominal circumference and femur length. He said the baby is positioned perfectly at the moment and that the measurements all looked good.

The worst part of the appointment? There was sugar in my urine so they are making me do the 3 hour glucose tolerance test. Ugh. My veins are small and they roll, so getting 2 or 3 blood draws in one day is not an attractive prospect. Thankfully I can get it done here in town and will do so early next week. I'm not too worried about gestational diabetes simply because I've had sugar in my urine with all three pregnancies and never had a problem. This is the first time for this test, though.

The only thing I'm not so sure about with this obstetrician is he seems to push the epidural quite a bit. Although fentanyl is not an option at this hospital, I'm not sure I'm ready to say yes to the epidural right off the bat. I told him I'd like to play it by ear when the time comes.

Stitching update ... finally!

2010-08-25T10:20:00.000-06:00

My stitching progress has slowed down throughout the summer. Lately there has been a feeling of fall in the air and I can tell by my renewed desire to stitch! I finally finished this rotation so, without further ado, here are some updated pictures.

I feel like I'm moving very slowly on this one for some reason. This picture includes 2 hours of work for the next rotation, too, so the next picture will show less progress.

I am really enjoying working on Celtic Summer :)

This piece is much prettier in person. Still working on this tiny little piece of the overall puzzle.

The reason there are two extra hours on Carousel is because I got stalled on this one. Until this rotation I was still stitching this off the original pattern. When I got to it this time I was unwilling to do any more until I got a photocopy of the pattern so I stitched on Carousel until I was able to get it done. The reason I did the little ribbon on the dress is I like to work it in tiers. Next rotation I will be working on yellow, yellow, and a bit of brown ...

Handy Oatmeal Cookies

2010-08-23T18:39:00.004-06:00

Peter left yesterday for a week of training and should be back Friday night. Looking at the chaos around me last night and feeling quite overwhelmed I decided it might be worth getting back on the Flylady bandwagon. So far the first 24 hours have been a rousing success. Since I tire easily at the moment - using 10 or 15 minute blocks for cleaning interspersed with lots of rest has helped me make it through the day.

It rained most of the day so the kids and I spent the whole day in the house. To give Nathan something fun to do this afternoon we decided to make cookies. I looked in the fridge ... no eggs. Thankfully I remembered I had this recipe for oatmeal cookies that doesn't require eggs. The recipe is from Vicki Lansky's Kids Cooking.

Here's the recipe (it makes a lot of cookies - probably 4 dozen or so):

1 1/2 c butter
3 c oats
1 1/2 c flour (I wanted to try whole wheat but, again, we're out ... guess I'll have to get some groceries soon!)
1 1/2 c brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Put all ingredients in a big bowl and mash it all together with your hands. Keep mixing until it is a uniform consistency and everything sticks together. Drop in balls on baking sheet (I think it's best to flatten them a bit). Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes.

They're actually pretty good cookies considering how few ingredients are in them. Probably not in my top three cookie recipes or anything, but they'll do in a pinch :) At least they're nice and chewy.

4 more days until Peter comes home ... :)

Bathroom renovation - plumbing, electrical, and drywall complete

2010-08-13T20:40:00.006-06:00

I didn't realize it had been so long since a renovation update! We gutted the downstairs bathroom completely, and Peter spent many hours becoming familiar with how to fix up plumbing and electrical. While he was working on the downstairs bathroom he decided to add an outlet to the upstairs bathroom (neither bathroom had an outlet when we moved in). What a great hubby! It is wonderful to be able to dry and straighten my hair in the bathroom now.

Once Peter got the plumbing and electrical downstairs straightened away (he installed a new fan, outlet, and switch for a light that used to be on a pull cord) a friend came over and they installed the drywall. After about a week for crack-filling, Peter was able to prime the room yesterday and painted the ceiling tonight. It is finally starting to come together! Today I painted the door and the trim before we install them. It is really nice to be doing one room at a time and be able to do things at a more leisurely pace. Painting trim before installation is something we regretted not doing at our previous house. Hopefully it will make touch-ups after installation go much more quickly.

The pictures don't look like much at this point but I'll post them anyway.

I can't wait to get some paint on the walls (still have to decide on a colour) and get the rest of the fixtures installed :)

As for the next task on our list - we will be tackling the downstairs bedroom. The plan is to create a walk-in closet by combining the super-narrow closet with a tiny (and useless) storage room. We will replace the paneling with drywall, install new trim, lights, and eventually flooring (but that will be done when we do the rest of the basement). We'd like to have the bedroom and bathroom completed before the baby arrives ... that date is getting closer!

ETA: I just realized I haven't posted a picture of the floor. Peter tiled and grouted the floor. It looks great!

Sorry folks ... another garden update :)

2010-08-09T15:10:00.003-06:00

The garden is still doing well. I took some pictures over a week ago but have yet to post them. The most exciting part of the garden at the moment is watching the vine plants grow. I finally got up two of the three supports I need and it's fun to weave the vines in and out of the netting.

Here is a picture of my middle box. The squash plant in the back is taking over, as are the tomato plants!

As you can see by the difference between the left and right sides of the box, Peter got the weeds done on the left-hand side and not the right. Hopefully that will change soon. He did it so much faster than I am able to at the moment! The beans (in the third row between two tomato plants) definitely need to be tied up a bit. I just need to take out some string.

Here is my biggest cucumber (as of July 31st). I'm hoping to make pickles so I planted 6 plants. I need a 6 quart basket of cucumbers ... anyone have any idea how many cucumbers that would be approximately?

And our first harvest of carrots and beans. There weren't enough of either one ready to eat, but we combined them. There is nothing like carrots straight from the garden :)

That's it for today. Our apples are growing and it looks like we will have enough to last the winter from our McIntosh tree - yay! I am enjoying gardening immensely and already looking forward to next year.

Hannah - 16 month summary

2010-08-01T07:59:00.003-06:00

Doesn't she look like a little girl in that picture?? Where's my baby?

Hannah has learned to shake her head and nod in response to questions this month. It's kind of funny, because her default is to shake her head, then she figures out what you asked and changes to a nod if her answer is yes. I tested her a few days ago to see how much she understands. I was folding a load of diapers in the living room. I handed on to her and said, "Take the diaper to your room, please, Hannah." Right away she started her bum shuffle to her room, diaper in hand. It was so cute to see. It surprised me, too. I didn't think she would understand that clearly. I guess I will have to up my expectations for her!

Hannah's newest unprompted word this month is 'shoes.' This makes me laugh all the time because it makes me think she's a true girl! She is mimicking many of the words we say. Pretty much anything is fair game. 'Poopy bum' is one that stands out as being common. I guess it's something I say often.

The soother has reappeared this month. I just gave in and started giving it to her again at nap times and bedtimes. She no longer needs it to get to sleep, but she does get to sleep more quickly when she has it.

One other skill Hannah has been working on this month (no, it's not walking ... sigh), is sitting up from laying on her back. Most mornings and nap times I find her sitting in her crib. It's also nice that she can sit back up when she falls over on the floor now, especially as I am finding it harder and harder to bend over :)

Hannah is pretty much down to one nap. Unfortunately it's not as long as I would like, but she does not have any problem staying up until her nap just after lunch. She does sleep wonderfully at night - at least 13 hours at a time - so I really can't complain.

Hannah got one new tooth on the bottom this month for a grand total of 9 teeth. She can eat just about anything now :)

ETA: I finally started giving Hannah a spoon to eat with this month. They asked me about it at her 1 year appointment, so I am obviously behind. I only started this month by accident. We were at a friend's house for dinner and there was a fork in front of her place. Hannah went nuts wanting that fork! We were having rice with our supper, so it was a bad choice to try for the first time, but she had a good time. I've since given her a spoon several times with various types of food. Tonight she even ate some of her spaghetti with a spoon. I think starting later with this (as with most things) means fewer messes to clean up (we noticed this with potty training Nathan around his third birthday).

Brain-sucking baby

2010-07-31T19:45:00.002-06:00

I'm managing to squeeze one last post in before the end of the month, but 4 posts for July is pretty abysmal. Hopefully next month will be better.

I really hope this baby is intelligent, because with this pregnancy, more than the other two, I feel like my own brain is just not functioning. I half-wonder if it's because I'm at home this time (instead of working and being in school), but I really don't know. I can't seem to string together two coherent sentences. This has not helped me keep up with blogging!

Peter worked last night so the kids and I headed out to the yard for some play time this morning. Hannah and Nathan both enjoy playing in the sand box and it is fun to see them play together. I still have to do more refereeing than I would like, but that will hopefully decrease as they get older. While they were playing I continued setting up my trellises for my climbing plants. I will be so glad to have these all ready to go at the start of next year! I now have two set up completely (a gardening post is coming early next week ...). The third, which I need for 4 cucumber plants, has not even been started.

After lunch both kids had a rest (Hannah napped and Nathan played in his room). I sat and read a book for an hour - what bliss! I'm reading through the Women's Murder Club series by James Patterson. I have to ignore approximately one page per book of stuff that I don't want to read about, but other than that I am really enjoying them. I'm on book 6.

After their rest we set up the kid's pool and they played in that while my wonderful husband tore up a bunch of weeds. I have had very few problems with weeds inside my garden boxes, but outside the boxes they had basically taken over. He got about half of them removed today and hopefully he can get to the other half early next week. I watered plants, and generally babied them. I spend way too much time watching them grow.

We took the kids for ice cream in the late afternoon. Hannah ate almost a whole small ice cream! Unbelievable. Of course, since it was so late neither child ate a great supper, but I figure that's ok every once in a while.

And ... since I haven't posted many this month ... here are some pictures I took tonight of the kids. They're not the best pictures, but they'll have to do for now.

Where have I been?

2010-07-27T21:28:00.003-06:00

Through text conversations with two people today I was reminded that this blog has been neglected. So ... I thought I'd come and at least post something, even if it's nothing really well thought out or composed.

Our month has been fairly uneventful thus far. I can feel the third trimester draining my energy more each day, but as long as I remember to rest in the afternoon when the kids do and in the evenings after they go to bed I seem to be able to keep up.

Here are some of the highlights of what we've been up to this month ...

Swimming Lessons
We signed Nathan up for swimming lessons. They were every morning for two weeks at the outdoor pool just down the road. We signed him up in a preschool class for ages 3 - 5. He went the first day ... and wouldn't get in the water. It wasn't the water that was the problem, it was the whole atmosphere of having to go in with new kids and without Mom or Dad. We tried for 4 days before admitting defeat and taking him to the parents and tots class. He loved that, but Peter and I were still worried about his hesitance to leave our side. The swimming part he did really well. He loves to go underwater and has even started 'swimming' a bit unassisted. It's messy, but at least we have forward floating :)

VBS
We signed Nathan up for VBS for this week. After our experience with swimming lessons we weren't too sure how this was going to go. Yesterday, Nathan started crying as soon as we entered the church building (it's not at the church we attend, which didn't help). One of his friends is also going to this VBS and we had hoped that would help somewhat. It may have, but Peter still ended up staying for the whole time. Today I took Nathan. I still stayed for the whole time, but after the first few minutes left the room and he stayed with his class. He did so much better today that I'm hoping to leave after the opening time tomorrow. I'm so glad to see progress!

Garden
The garden is growing really well. There are obviously a few things I will do differently next year. I am going to try a different variety of spinach as I wasn't very happy with the yield of the kind I had. I will plant more lettuce, beans, and carrots. I finally got one of my three trellises up with netting for the squash and some cucumbers. One of the other trellises is up but the netting is not finished and the third has yet to be constructed. I can't wait until they are all set but it's getting late!

Stitching
I have been doing a very small amount of stitching lately. Not much to report.

YNAB
What has been taking up most of my free time is playing around with and reading about a new budgeting software I downloaded and eventually bought. It's called YNAB (You Need A Budget), and after using it for the last month I love it!! Peter and I have made multiple budgets throughout the years but this is the first software I've seen that seems to work the same way my brain works. I also love the methodology behind the software.

Hannah
Hannah is still not walking :( I'll do a summary post for her around the first of August so I'll leave the other details for then.

Visitors
Last Friday night my aunt and uncle came for a visit!! It was so nice to see family. The drove from the east coast and stopped in for a night on their way to visit my cousin several hours away. They arrived in time for supper Friday night and headed out early Saturday morning. We had a great time visiting and playing games. Nathan talked about them all day Saturday - so cute!

Well, that's about all the typing I can handle for one night ... I'm out of practice!

Pregnancy Summary - Week 27

2010-07-08T18:43:00.001-06:00

I've been putting off doing a pregnancy summary post because I haven't taken an 'official' belly pic in months. However, Peter took these pictures of Nathan and I flying a kite earlier this week and I figured they will have to do.

Hmmm ... changes since my 16 week summary ... lots! lol. The most noticeable difference is my energy level. I am realizing that I can't quite keep up with everything the way I normally do. I'm trying to cut myself some slack, but there's only so much I can let go without the house and kids getting out of control!

In the same vein, I mentioned to the nurse practitioner a couple of weeks ago at my appointment that I'm having some Braxton Hicks contractions when I've been doing a lot of picking things up off the floor. Her solution ... stop picking things up off the floor! lol. Ummm ... not really possible. Thankfully they seem to have disappeared since then.

I had my regular 20 week ultrasound and when I went to my next doctor's appointment they said they needed to do another as they didn't quite get all the measurements they needed. When I went for the second ultrasound the technician said they had been worried about low fluid levels, but that everything looked good. Then, when I went to the obstetrician today he said the radiologist who read the initial ultrasound thought the baby might have club foot ... but that the second ultrasound looked good. I'm really wondering which person was telling me the truth. I'm guessing the obstetrician, but it seems weird I got three different stories.

My first appointment with the obstetrician was today (July 6th). He seemed very nice, although he has me a little worked up since he said my drug of choice (fentanyl) will most likely not be an option for this baby! I have no idea what to do ... I'm going to try and get some more information before I really start to worry.

He asked me to come back in three weeks and then every two weeks after that. I was totally shocked when he said that. I hadn't realized we were at that point in the pregnancy already.

Hannah - 15 month summary

2010-07-06T18:57:00.002-06:00

I'm about a week late with this post, but better late than never, right?

Hannah's skin cleared up this month. No more rashes and her eczema seems to be gone for now.

Hannah started giving kisses and hugs this month. So cute!! She is generally not overly affectionate, so being able to get her to lean in for a kiss is precious. She seems to find it quite amusing, too, so that makes it fun.

Hannah is still talking, although hasn't really added many words to her vocabulary this month. It's so close ... she just keeps on babbling all the time.

One big change for Hannah this month is I took her soother away. Peter was away for a week so I decided that was a good time to do it (I know, I'm a sucker for punishment). The first two days were rough - she cried 20 or 30 minutes every time she went down for a sleep. After that she seemed to resign herself to no soother and has been ok for naps and night time since. I still miss it when it would come in handy to keep Hannah quiet (such as at church) but that's the price I pay for having a soother-free toddler :)

We are in the middle of trying out one nap for Hannah. We have moved her afternoon nap to 12:30 or 1:00 instead of 2:00. This time works better for Nathan's rest time, too.

And, the final update for this month ... a few nights ago Hannah had a small fever. She was unusually cranky and wouldn't sleep for her naps at all. Today I noticed she has two new teeth!! So ... I guess I can cut her some slack for being cranky :) She now has 8 teeth (6 top and 2 bottom).

Still no walking progress ... I am ready for that at any time!!

Garden update in pictures ...

2010-06-28T11:30:00.004-06:00

I have to go pick Peter up in a few minutes so I'm going to update this quickly, mostly through pictures :) First, the boxes:

(green beans, cucumbers, empty, squash)
(lettuce, broccoli (an experiment), spinach, tomato)

(cucumbers, empty, squash, empty)
(tomato, green beans, yellow beans, tomato)
(empty, peppers, basil, empty)
(carrots, green onions (still going strong!), garlic, spinach)

(watermelon, empty, empty, pumpkin)
(spinach (on its last legs), carrots, lettuce, empty)

A couple of weeks ago a friend had some extra strawberry and raspberry plants that she didn't have space for. She also let me have a couple cuttings from her rhubarb plant. The strawberry plants looked good until I went out today ... hopefully it's just the heat getting to them.

I think only one of the raspberry plants was alive when I got it, but I'm still tending the rest just in case ...

And the rhubarb cuttings seem to be growing new leaves - yay!

Another friend has a big patch of rhubarb that was there when they bought their house, but they won't eat it. So, for this year, I think I am going to be able to harvest theirs while I wait for mine to be ready :)

I would still like to plant another square of broccoli, perhaps some more carrots and cucumbers, but that will have to wait for another day. The weeds outside of the boxes have been insane!! I just can't keep ahead of them. I took these pictures after spending about 45 minutes with a shovel digging them out. Ugh. By next year the plan is to put landscape fabric down in all the spaces and cover them with mulch. Hopefully that helps.

Popsicles

2010-06-16T10:30:00.005-06:00

The weather here has been so nice the past few days. It makes me believe summer is really coming!

It had been raining for so long that as soon as the sun peeked through we spent almost every spare minute outside. After a few days of that I made myself at least do my daily cleaning before we headed out yesterday ... the house was starting to look pretty neglected!

Anyway, after the bathroom was cleaned top to bottom we headed out to the little pool in the backyard. The kids had a blast playing in it until we got worried about sunburns and decided it was time to hop out and re-apply some sunscreen. At that point we gave them each a popsicle (Hannah's first time having one to hold by herself!) and they had a blast dripping all over the place. I'm so glad we were outside.

Peter took the opportunity to do an informal photo shoot. Here are a couple of my favourites ...

There are many, many more pictures on our flickr site.

Weekly Round-up

2010-06-13T19:44:00.005-06:00

This week we really settled back into our routine a bit. Peter's work schedule has been absolutely bizarre since we got back and this week was no exception. He's worked a bunch of 'day' shifts, but they started anywhere between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. I really don't like the ones where he leaves before lunch and gets back after the kids go to bed ... very tiring! He is working today but then has most of this week off. We are looking forward to lots of family time.

This week we had company for supper a few times and went out for dinner to celebrate the birthday of one of Peter's coworkers. It was really nice to get back in touch with people I hadn't seen in a while.

The last few days have finally been sunny and warm! Peter took Nathan swimming at the nearby outdoor pool on Thursday. We're contemplating putting Nathan in one of the 2-week swimming lessons this summer. It would probably be good for him to be in a structured setting like that.

We also finally gave Nathan the rest of his birthday presents this week! We gave him this Aquadoodle mural for his wall. So far it has been a big hit. We also gave him a tee ball set and a tool belt.

He's going to have fun helping Peter this week when we get back to work on renovations :)

We had our ultrasound for the baby this week as well. The technician said the baby (singular ;) ) looked good and was the right size for our dates. This was good news as I had been measuring large early in the pregnancy.

Our vegetable garden has taken off this week. Everything I've planted except watermelon and pumpkin (they were just planted last weekend) is up. Here are some pictures I took tonight.

(empty, empty, empty, cucumber)
(lettuce, empty, spinach, tomato)

(cucumber, empty, squash, empty)
(tomato, green beans, yellow beans, tomato)
(empty, pepper, dill, empty)
(carrots, green onions, garlic, empty)

(back row nothing is up yet)
(spinach, carrots, empty, empty)

I'm planning to plant another round of spinach, carrots, lettuce, and beans at some point this week. We also have to get our supports up for the squash, cucumbers, watermelon, and pumpkin.

Other than that it's been a fairly uneventful week. Nathan is doing ok with the potty training. He keeps waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, and then peeing on the floor. A bit frustrating, but the last two mornings he's made it, so hopefully it's a trend in the right direction.

Our plans for this week are to make some headway with the bathroom renovations (post on the progress so far to come later this week). I would like to see us finish grouting the floor, installing the shower, and fixing the electrical this week. Since Peter only works one shift this week I think it's reasonable. It is definitely different trying to get construction work done with two little ones running around!

Well, Nathan is crying for me to come turn on his night light so I'd better run ...

Yet another garden update!!

2010-06-09T20:32:00.005-06:00

Several of my seedlings did not survive while I was away. Of the few that did survive, most have passed away since I've been back (eeks!) Looks like I'll be trying again on the herbs. I've had an offer of a cutting of a chive plant, and I'm probably going to buy a small rosemary plant. So far the parsley is still alive ...

Not all the news is bad, though. This is what my outdoor garden looked like when I got back.

(green onions ... garlic)

(spinach)

The only thing that didn't survive the weeks while I was away was the lettuce, but it was pretty much dead before I left. A few days after I got home we harvested a complete bunch of green onions. They are so yummy! Much tastier than the ones we get from the stores. The one we pulled out was a 'thinning' of a sort (two grew in one of the spots), so I still have 9 plants in the ground. I've just been snipping of a few green onions every day to use in our meals.

Last week I also started cutting off spinach leaves. Instead of letting the leaves grow to their full potential I much prefer cutting them when they are around 2" long - more like the baby spinach from the grocery store. One of my biggest hopes for this gardening adventure is that it will help Nathan eat more salad-type vegetables. He's pretty good with cooked veggies, but getting him to eat a salad is pretty much impossible. Well, Nathan ate his first piece of raw spinach from our garden last week ... we're on our way!

On Monday, May 31st, we planted more spinach, lettuce, cucumbers (2 squares), carrots (2 squares), yellow beans, green beans, dill, and squash. As of today everything except the squash is at least up through the ground. Yay!

Last Wednesday I got a call from a friend saying she knew someone who might have some tomato seedlings if I wanted a couple. I jumped at the chance, since all of mine have died. A couple of days later this lovely lady dropped off 3 tomato plants. They were already 6" to 8" high! I planted them that day, bought some tomato cage things and some tomato fertilizer, and they are still looking great. In fact, one of the plants has blossoms on it today! I'm so thankful for this friendly lady who shared her wealth of seedlings with me.

Last Friday we planted watermelon and pumpkin in the garden. So far nothing on them, but it's still early.

I'm still so enthused about the gardening ... it's so much fun! Can't wait to see how things progress over the next few months. I'll try and take some new pictures this week.

Nathan - 3 year summary

2010-06-04T20:20:00.000-06:00

I know it's cliché, but I can't believe Nathan is already 3 years old!! Despite this disbelief, it also seems so hard to remember life before he was here. I was just talking to Mom the other day and saying how I do remember it being difficult to adjust to having a baby - Peter and I were married for almost 6 years before he came along and we were very used to being out all the time. Once that period of adjustment was over, though, it seemed like he had always been part of our family and I know neither of us would have it any other way.

Since birth Nathan has been a very laid-back kid. In general, he adapts well to change and that has been a great quality this past year! I always say that he is introverted like me and laid back like Peter. I'm sure that's an oversimplified summary of his personality, but it seems pretty accurate most of the time.

The biggest change in Nathan over the past year has been in his speech. He was slow to start - hardly speaking before his second birthday - but has quickly caught up. He speaks clearly in complete sentences and seems to have an unlimited vocabulary. He picks up new words and phrases all the time - it's amazing! He speaks so that others can understand him most of the time, although a few words, like 'helicopter' and 'umbrella' still give him trouble.

Nathan loves to look at books and to be read to. I think he would sit all day and be read to if someone would read to him for that long.

Nathan is generally very sensitive. Things will stick in his mind and he will get scared. As a result we are very careful what we say and what we let him watch. In January he somehow fixated on pigs and had nightmares about them and was scared to go to sleep for weeks. He still talks about the pigs and how he was scared of them during that time. He is also very affected by the moods of the people around him. I think this is something he gets from me ...

In the past few months Nathan has begun a workbook on tracing. It has really helped his fine motor control and will hopefully prepare him for printing. His absolute favourite 'crafty' thing to do right now is play with stickers. He loves them ... I can't even put into words how much he loves to take stickers off the page and stick them on another page. The funny thing is he sticks them all one on top of the other! No matter how many times we show him differently he still does it that way. Oh well.

Nathan is just about potty trained as far as using the toilet goes. He is not yet able to pull his pants down or up independently, or to get on or off the toilet by himself. He will sometimes tell us if he has to go to the washroom, but often we have to take him at regular intervals. We have just started night training and so far so good (4 for 4 dry nights). Potty training was really much less of an issue than I thought it would be, although perhaps starting late helped it go more smoothly. I am sure there are many accidents in our future, but I hope the majority of them are behind us.

Nathan is obviously eating table foods. This summer he has just started trying salad vegetables such as spinach and lettuce. I hope that by involving him in our vegetable garden he will be more open to eating more vegetables. He is not a bad eater, but he is still more picky than he was at a year. In our household, however, the kids eat what we eat, and since I love to try new recipes, he is constantly exposed to a wide variety of foods.

People talk about the terrible twos, and I didn't really see them until about 2 months before Nathan's 3rd birthday. In fact, I'm thinking we might be dealing with the terrible threes instead. Nathan really seems to be testing his boundaries, especially when it comes to how he relates to other children. He often pushes Hannah or takes toys from her, and tries to do the same when playing with kids from other families. It is so tiring to referee this all the time and very frustrating, since when I ask him what he was doing wrong he can describe it to me perfectly! I keep hoping that if we are consistent with his discipline that he will eventually stop these behaviours.

I never tire of Nathan's hugs or his need to 'cuddle' on the couch. I very much wonder if physical touch isn't his primary love language. He has always been cuddly and when he plays with other kids he always wants to be very close to them ... something we are working on. Something to watch for as he grows ...

Nathan has grown up so much in the last year - I can't imagine what he will be like by the time 4 rolls around!

Hannah - 14 month summary

2010-06-02T19:58:00.001-06:00

Proof that she really is my daughter - she already loves Diet Coke! (Disclaimer - she has never actually tasted it, she just likes to pretend :) )

This month has also been an eventful month for Hannah (I feel like I'm constantly saying that!) We had a 1 week trip planned to go east that turned into a 3 week trip for the kids and I, which was a blessing, but didn't help with Hannah's routine. The first week we were there was chaotic. At the time we thought we only had 6 days at home so we were cramming as much as possible into that time, including my brother's wedding. Hannah probably missed 75% of her naps and was up late several nights. By the time Peter headed home I had decided for both kids' sakes (and my sanity), we had to slow down. We took a few days at the beginning of that week to allow the kids to get back on some sort of schedule.

Hannah dealt well with the plane rides. In all we were on 4 planes and her ears didn't seem to bother her. She slept some on the planes, played, ate, and watched a show on the laptop with Nathan. Having to hold her on our lap the whole time was a bit tricky as she is not a cuddle-bug, but we survived (and it was worth saving the price of a plane ticket for her!). She was actually more cuddly while we were back east than normal, but that may have been because she was a bit overwhelmed with all the changes.

Hannah had a few minor, unexplained rashes while we were home. I haven't had much luck identifying the cause, but they looked a bit like hives and were gone within 12 hours each time they showed up. At the same time her eczema on her neck has come back a bit. She dealt with a bout of what we think was eczema right around her neck last fall. At first I didn't think much of the rash, since as a 6 month old she was constantly drooling. However, when she started scratching at it I figured it was something more than just a drool rash. I took her in to the doctor and they gave her some cream to help with the itching. It cleared up before Christmas and this is the first sign of it we've seen since. It is much milder than before (maybe because there is no drool to irritate it?) but I put a bit of the cream on it this morning after her bath since she was scratching a bit.

Hannah's speech has taken off this month. She still doesn't say many words clearly, but she will mimic sounds (like 'baby' - so cute!), and makes sounds (such as 'dee') to mean certain words (in this case, 'drink'). I can see that over the next several months she is going to become quite a talker. She already babbles all day long. I love listening to her!

I didn't make any consistent, organized changes to naps this month since everything was so crazy, but I do think she is ready for longer wake times. She still sleeps a good 12 hours every night, for which I am so thankful!

We did not take any bottles east with us, and since she survived without them for 3 weeks I would say she is weaned from that. She still has her soother quite often, but I am determined that it will be going the way of the dodo bird very soon. Since we've been home she only has it for naps and at night. I think we will try phasing it out of those times within the next week or so.

Hannah still eats everything in sight - yay! I am hoping this will continue, but I fear when she gets closer to 2 the picky factor might show up.

Hannah has 5 teeth now and a 6th is ready to come through. She still only has 2 on bottom and 3 (almost 4) on top. I can't remember the order in which they are 'supposed' to arrive.

The rest of the parts of our schedule (reading time, independent playtime, sibling play time) have been virtually nonexistent this month because of the trip east. We will be working on getting back in to everything this month.

We're back!

2010-06-01T16:58:00.006-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few weeks, but we were too busy visiting and enjoying the time back east. We flew back here on Saturday, made trips to Costco and Superstore, then headed home. Our flight out left at 5:35 in the morning and we finally walked in the door at home at supper time (which, with the time difference, was more like 8 p.m.). Needless to say we were exhausted! It was still good to be home, though, and after a quick supper the kids headed to straight to bed and I followed shortly after.

I finally finished unpacking yesterday and got the house pretty much back to rights.

Peter's work schedule has been completely weird since we got back, so that's throwing us off a bit. He's worked the last three supper hours (usually he only works one supper hour every three weeks) and I must say I don't enjoy the new hours. Thankfully they are temporary.

Our last couple of weeks at home were much more relaxing. We still had lots of visiting time, saw a few rugby games and some figure skating, and bought some gifts to leave there to save on shipping costs later.

Here is a picture of Hannah obviously disagreeing with a rugby call:

Nathan got a play tent with a tunnel while we were home and he had a blast playing with it for an afternoon there.
I had kind of forgotten about it until I was looking at pictures for this post. I actually paused while writing this to take the kids outside to play with it (which then turned in to supper time, walk, bedtime ... and now I'm back at it). They both had a blast.

We are looking forward to settling back into our routine (I am such a routine person!!) here at home and looking forward to some visitors in the not too distant future!!

Trip home

2010-05-19T07:18:00.004-06:00

We traveled home last week for my brother's wedding. Since Peter is still in his initial six-month work period, he was only able to come for a week. Initially we booked the rest of our tickets so we would have left with him this past Monday. However, thanks to some helpful Air Canada employees we were able to switch the tickets for me and the kids so we get to stay for another couple of weeks. It wasn't free, but since this is probably our only trip to NB before next year we figured we should take advantage of the time.

We didn't change the tickets until Saturday night, so all last week was a whirlwind trying to fit in as many visits as possible, plus get ready for the wedding. We arrived home on Tuesday evening and had a family party at Mom & Dad's where we got to eat Pizza Delight. Yum! I've missed their pizza and garlic fingers. Wednesday we spent a fairly relaxing day just visiting with close family. We ate at the Alehouse for lunch and got scallops and kettle chips ... yum again!

Thursday we visited with Peter's Dad and then his Mom, then headed to Fredericton for the rehearsal. It was good to get to see more people and I got a visit set up for the weekend with a good friend who happened to be visiting her parents from Halifax :)

Friday morning Peter headed back to Fredericton early for the bachelor party day. After brunch at Cora's (another great restaurant that's missing from SK :( ) I headed up with the kids to visit with friends for the afternoon and overnight. Saturday was the wedding day. It was a beautiful ceremony and the rain held off so they could get their pictures done outdoors. I can't wait to see them! Here are a couple snapshots of our little family on the wedding day.

Saturday night is when we changed the tickets (while visiting more friends in Fredericton), so Sunday was a much happier day than it would have been otherwise! Sunday we went to church in Fredericton and got to see lots of friends there, then headed to lunch with more friends, stopped in at a surprise birthday party, then came back to SJ for a combined birthday party for Nathan, Mom, and myself. I think we were all running on pure adrenaline by now - it was such a busy week!

Hannah especially missed so much sleep throughout that week, she's been taking super long naps ever since to try and make up for it. Her disposition didn't seem to suffer too much from the lack of sleep, thankfully.

For this next 10 days or so I'm taking it much slower! Enjoying time at Mom and Dad's and setting up a few more visits with friends before we head home. Peter is tending my garden at home - I can't wait to see how things grew while I was away! I am not really looking forward to taking both kids on the plane by myself ... I guess it will be good practice for next year when I may have 3!

Room Arrangements

2010-05-15T07:42:00.000-06:00

With the impending arrival of baby #3, we have had to figure out something for kids' bedrooms. This house has three bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs. None of our kids will be old enough when the baby is born for us to feel comfortable with one of them downstairs, so two kids will have to share a room. Nathan is currently in the bigger bedroom and Hannah is in the nursery.

Our plan was to buy a second crib for Hannah and have her move into Nathan's room for the first 6 months or so of the new baby's life. Then, the two kids with the same gender would share the bigger room.

There was a community yard sale of just kids' items this morning (May 8) in our town. We stopped in looking specifically for a crib and an infant car seat. The only car seat we found was expired, so we passed on that and will likely buy new. They also didn't have any cribs, but they did have a toddler bed with a mattress for $65. The toddler bed has rails by the head of the bed, so we decided we'll be crazy and try putting Hannah in that when the baby is born. She will only be 18 months old, so it could be very interesting, but I'm sure it will work out in the end.

Here is Nathan's room all set up with the two beds ...

(Yes, Nathan's room is pink right now. We'll fix that eventually. We also need to get him an actual bed - he's still sleeping on a twin mattress set on the floor.)

I think we'll probably move Hannah over in early September, about a month before baby #3 is due. It's not like I'll be sleeping by that point in my pregnancy, anyway, so I might as well deal with a bed transition ;0)

Bath time fun

2010-05-13T08:30:00.000-06:00

A few months ago I started bathing Nathan and Hannah together most of the time. I never thought I would do it but I tried it when we were staying in the hotel and they had such a good time I couldn't help it. Bath time is now in the mornings with our new schedule, and although we don't get to it every day (sometimes the kids sleep in and we skip that part to get back on track) they love having their baths together.

They don't, however, love having their hair washed. *sigh* Nathan used to be fine laying back in the water, and as you can see from the picture above, he doesn't mind laying on his tummy on his own terms, but laying on their backs causes both of them to tense up. And heaven forbid I get water in their eyes! I would like to use the handheld shower sprayer as I find trying to get the soap out with just a cup takes forever. It is a 30 second job to wash their hair with the nozzle, but both of them flip out when I turn it on. I think I'll keep working at it, though. It will be worth it in the end!

I think both kids would stay in the tub forever if I let them. I just realized the other day that it's a great source of sibling play time. At the moment if I put them in a room together to play, they end up each taking a separate toy and playing with it, but in the tub they splash and play together. It's so much fun to see them having fun together.

Stitching update!

2010-05-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

I started this cycle on April 19th and finished on May 5th, so 16 days. Pretty consistent! Here is a link to my last stitching post.

Here are updated progress pics (sorry for the poor quality) ...

Carousel (Theresa Wentzler)
Started: January 2007 (estimated at 182 hours completed)

I think I will be able to finish the horse I'm working on in this next rotation, then only 3 more and on to the bottom of the carousel.

Celtic Summer (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 12 hours)

I spent most of my time on purple this rotation.

Nativity - Centre Panel (Marbek)
Started: unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 12 hours)

This picture is really washed out compared to the actual colours. It keeps striking me that this angel is probably 3/4 the amount of work in some of the other complete projects I've done, and it's such a small part of the whole thing! lol.

Dance of the Roses (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Feb. 2007 (?? + 12 hours)

So much yellow!!! I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through when I look at the pattern and see how massive her skirt is. I still don't have a photocopy of this pattern and would really like to get one.

Weekly Round-up

2010-05-09T07:54:00.001-06:00

This was another good week for our family. We continued to use our schedule, although admittedly I was not as strict with it this week.

Nathan
Nathan continued with his tracing book this week. He still loves it and is getting into more and more complicated lines. He seems to be less enamoured with puzzles lately, although we did wake up to him having finished one while we slept this morning.

His potty training took one step forward and one step back this week. He started on Wednesday telling me when he would have to pee. This saves countless trips to the bathroom every day! I still make sure he sits before his independent play time, before rest time, before bed, and before we leave the house, but other than that he tells me if he has to go. The step backward is that he will not poop on the potty anymore. He pretty much only goes in his diaper first thing in the morning. I think the best solution for that will be to switch to underwear at night. He generally wakes up dry in the morning so I think he's ready for it ... I'm just not sure I am! I think we'll wait about a week and then start with that.

Nathan sleeps during about half his rest times at the moment. I really thought he was done with naps, but I'm glad I was wrong. This week he ripped up a book during one of his rest times ... as a result all books have been removed from his room for the time being.

Hannah
Hannah completely weaned herself from the bottle this week. She is now drinking a full straw cup of milk at lunch and one at supper, so she is getting enough milk. She still has her soother and likely will for a while. She seems to rely on it quite a bit.

Now that her night sleep is back to normal, I tried her in cloth diapers at night. I had tried about a month ago, but it was in the middle of her teething / ear infection / flu bit and I couldn't be sure if she was waking from one of those things or from the diaper. So far so good with the diapers at night. I'm so excited to be using all cloth except for when we travel!

I've mentioned before that Hannah did not enjoy standing ... at all. She seems to have changed her mind this week. On Friday she just decided that she was going to start wanting to stand and will even try to walk if I hold her hands. I am so excited about this development and will probably focus lots of energy helping her learn to walk independently!

We tried sitting Hannah on a toy car she got for her birthday yesterday and to our surprise, this is what happened!

She loved pushing herself around and chasing Nathan on the car. So much fun.

Peter hired a babysitter and we went out to dinner and movie Friday night. We hadn't gone out without the kids since February, so it was very nice to have some couple time! We saw The Bounty Hunter, and it was actually much better than I expected. The theatre here in our small town is brand-new and it's so cheap compared to going in the city - it cost us $25 for two tickets, a large popcorn, and two pops!

Goals
My housekeeping skills have been pretty good for the last month. For some reason I've been able to keep the house presentable pretty much all the time. I'm not sure what the difference has been but I hope it sticks around! One thing that wasn't working is the cleaning schedule I outlined here. I tried to think about why it wasn't working and I think it's because I had to be all over the house every day for my cleaning. With the kids it's nice to be able to focus on one area so the kids can stay in one spot while I work. So, I decided to make up my own schedule that has me focus on one (or sometimes a few) room(s) per day. Once I see how well it work I'll post what I'm doing :) I did manage to follow the schedule for Thursday and Friday, though, and it seemed good.

As far as the money goal goes, we spent little except for a deal we got yesterday (post to follow in a few days). Since it will save money in the long run I'm pretty happy with that.

I'm going to work with Hannah on her walking for this week.

Happy Mother's Day!

Home-made pizza calzones

2010-05-08T20:21:00.005-06:00

Peter and I have always enjoyed calzones from Pizza Delight, so when I knew there was going to be a hockey game on a supper time tonight I decided I would try to make some of my own.

They ended up being fairly time- and labour-intensive, but well worth the effort! They were very yummy. The recipes / ingredients I used are all adapted from elsewhere and I will give credit where I can find it :)

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (from my bread maker cookbook)
1 cup warm water
2 Tbsp oil
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups bread flour (since there is more white than whole wheat flour, the name is slightly misleading)
1 Tbsp pizza yeast (the recipe called for less yeast than this, but I always add a bit extra)

I obviously used the bread maker to do the dough. When it came out of the bread maker I divided it into 4 balls and rolled each into approximately a 10" circle. I then put pizza sauce on 1/2 of the circle, added some bacon, green peppers (sauteed ahead of time), ground beef, and mozza cheese on top, then folded over the dough and sealed it. I took the basic instructions for shaping and cooking the calzones from here. I baked them in a 375 degree oven (preheated a stoneware pan in the oven beforehand) for 15 minutes, brushed the top with melted butter, and cooked them for another 10 minutes. Peter's observation was that they could have used more sauce, so next time I will spread the sauce over the whole dough circle and will be more generous with it.

After I had started the dough I realized I only had one small can of pizza sauce available, but I did have a can of tomato paste. I modified this recipe, which I had used before, to make lots of sauce for the calzones. The modifications I made were: I sauteed 2 cloves of garlic in olive oil before adding the tomato paste to the pot (instead of using garlic powder), added 1/4 cup of brown sugar (as I've found the sauce a bit bitter in the past), and omitted the MSG. It was quite yummy, and with the cost of a small can of pizza sauce creeping up to the $2 mark around here, I might start using this recipe more often!

These calzones were super yummy - I will definitely make them again. I served them with leftover pasta salad from lunch, to make it even more similar to the meal Peter usually orders at PD.

Downstairs - before

2010-05-07T08:10:00.005-06:00

Due to the shelves I spoke of here, we were able to reorganize the main areas of our downstairs this week. Getting all those boxes out of the main living area meant I was able to tidy everything up, vacuum, and now it's suitable for the kids to play in. It has basically doubled the amount of space the kids have to play in and I find they're getting bored less now that they have access to this space and the toys that are in it. Since the weather has been so bad the past few weeks it's great that they can amuse themselves indoors.

Here is a picture from the bottom of the stairs looking ahead and to the left:

Isn't the carpet lovely?? That's on our list to be replaced, as is the ceiling and paneling on the walls. Since that will obviously take a while, I've decided to try and keep the space as livable as possible until we get to this section.

Here's a view from the same spot looking ahead and to the right:

The door at the far end of the picture is to my cold room (which I love!) and if you look closely past the first post you can see into the bedroom. The bedroom has lovely carpet like the family room except it's green :) If I turned right from this picture and went towards the other end of the house I would hit the bathroom (that still looks as it did here).

And here is a picture if I turn left at the bottom of the stairs and look back toward the other side of the house:

At the very far end on the left of this picture you can see a door. That is the door to our laundry room. The piles of things at the end are the rest of the boxes that have to be unpacked from the move, some stuff for the garbage, and some for the salvation army.

Overall the downstairs is laid out pretty well for our uses, it just needs some major updating.

The plan right now is to rip out the rest of the ceiling next. The wiring down here is very bizarre and we want to get a good picture of everything so we can fix it properly. Then we will finish the bathroom and I'm not sure where we're going from there. Probably walls and then floor, but probably not all at once.

Kettle chips, cookies, and progress :)

2010-05-04T19:27:00.005-06:00

Peter is just finishing up his two days off and I feel like we got something accomplished while he was off. He finished the shelves we were working on last week, and having them allowed us to clean up a lot of the downstairs.

With another hour or two of tidying / unpacking it will be a great play room for the kids (it will be even better once we've replaced the paneling with drywall and replaced the orange and brown carpet with laminate :) ).

Tonight I decided to make some cookies I haven't made in a while. The recipe is from my friend Sunshine ... hopefully she doesn't mind if I post it.

They are called Crunchy Crisp Cookies and here is the recipe:

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup oatmeal
1 cup coconut (next time I will use a bit less - I'm not a coconut fan)
1 1/2 cups flour (next time I will try another 1/4 cup. I find when using butter instead of margarine the cookies are a bit 'greasier')
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt

I cream the butter and sugar together, add the egg, then all the dry ingredients. I tried using 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour this time and can't notice the difference. I really like these cookies - I think it's the brown sugar :) Cook at 350 degrees F for about 12 minutes.

And more cooking (this actually happened before the cookies):

I had a 'craving' for Saint John Alehouse's loaded kettle chips today so I decided to try making them myself. I sliced potatoes as thinly as I could, then shook them in a ziploc bag with a mixture of 2 Tbsp melted butter and 2 Tbsp olive oil (approximately). I arranged them in one layer on a cookie sheet and sprinkled them liberally with salt. I cooked them at 425 degrees F for about 30 minutes. Next time I will try 400 degrees F as some of the 'chips' burned.

After they were cooked (I flipped them after 20 minutes and removed the ones that were already done), I sprinkled them with cheddar cheese, green onions, and crumbled bacon. Put the plate with everything back in the oven at 325 degrees F to melt the cheese and served with sour cream. Sorry no pictures - they were gone pretty quickly :)

I was very impressed with how closely these imitated the ones from the Alehouse. They were way too much work to have very often, though!

Well, I must go console Peter since Montreal just lost ...

Weekly Round-up

2010-05-02T06:24:00.000-06:00

Since everyone was healthy, this week was much better than last week. I also implemented a new daily schedule for the kids this week. So far it is working out well. Hannah's independent play time is improving, the kids enjoy sibling playtime, and I love that I get to spend one-on-one time with Nathan during learning time. Our days have gone very smoothly so far both with Peter's day and night shifts. I haven't even had to do much tweaking yet ... although I may shorten Hannah's morning nap at some point.

Due in part to this post on a blog I read, I have been in an organizing mood for the past week or so. I bought some totes when we were in Regina on Monday and have put them to good use. I still need many more, but I was able to organize Hannah's closet and under our bathroom sink. To help with my goal of being more organized, Peter is building me over 60 feet of shelving in our laundry room. The room is large, but had no shelves in it at all! It did have an old cupboard of some sort, but it was quite useless. Today we took that out, added two 12' shelves over the washer, and Peter is in the middle of making 4 10' shelves on the other side of the room. Here is the room as it looks tonight:

Hopefully the shelves will hold our million boxes of kid clothes. I can't believe how quickly they multiply!

A few weeks ago we picked up our new living room furniture but I have neglected to take and post pictures of it. I love our new recliner sofa. It is so comfy!

(Happy, Mom? ... Pictures of the house :) )

Goals:
Still doing well keeping the kitchen clean at night. I noticed this week that the two times I didn't clean up before bed I did it first thing in the morning, while the kids ate breakfast. This is a definite improvement.

The schedule really helped me to do reading and learning time with Nathan and Hannah. It's great to have it slotted into our day so I don't get busy doing other things and forget.

I did about half of the daily tasks this week. I started out well, but got off track toward the end of the week. I will continue to work on that this week.

Hmmm ... for this week I would like to see how little money I can spend! lol. We're not planning any trips to the city this week so I have no reason to spend much. I'll probably need to pick up a few miscellaneous groceries at the co-op, but that should be it.

Hannah - 13 month summary

2010-04-30T23:23:00.007-06:00

This has been an eventful month for Hannah. On her first birthday she was diagnosed with her first ear infection. That, combined with teething, had made for a cranky few days before that. Her sleep was also disrupted during this time. About a week after starting the medicine for the ear infection she developed a rash. It didn't seem to bother her and went away after a few days, so I don't think it was anything serious.

The third week of the month Hannah got her 12 month needles, and 2 days later started with a fever. I didn't think much of it considering that is a common side effect of the immunizations. The next day, however, she started with vomiting and diarrhea. We watched her carefully for dehydration and it went away after 3 or 4 days.

After she recovered from those illnesses I expected to see my happy little girl return. However, it seems that during that span of several weeks, she got a little 'spoiled.' She wasn't sleeping well for naps or at night and was almost impossible during the times she was awake. She would cry and cry if she didn't get what she wanted immediately. So, we got a little tougher on the routine and she has seemed to resolve most of these issues in the last few days.

Hannah is still taking two naps a day, but I think I am going to have to shorten the morning nap this month. I find if she naps well in the morning she won't sleep at all in the afternoon. Currently she takes a 90 minute nap in the morning and in the afternoon. I think I will try shortening the morning nap to an hour and go from there. She is once again sleeping 12 or so hours at night. Yay! She went through a period of almost 2 months where she was up every night. So glad to get a full night's sleep again!

Hannah has started to wean herself from the bottle. She was having two 6 oz bottles a day (one in the morning and one in the evening). She currently will only drink about half of each bottle. Unfortunately, ever since she had the flu and we were basically forcing fluids down her throat, she does not like to drink at all. I have had some success with putting a straw in a regular cup and will continue with that for now. She will only drink milk or water. We have tried different kinds of juice with no success. I'm not too worried about that, but it would be nice if she would drink a little bit of juice.

Hannah eats everything in sight. She shovels food in like it's going out of style and doesn't seem to be picky at all. I would say at this point she eats as much as, if not more than, Nathan. I assume that will slow down at some point. At her 12 month appointment they asked if she was feeding herself with a spoon. I hadn't even given her a spoon to try and eat with yet so we've attempted that the past few days. She can get the spoon to her mouth, but much prefers her hands.

Hannah has learned to point, clap, and wave this month. She points to things she wants, which is much nicer than screaming. She claps all the time, and she always waves when she sees herself in the mirror. It's fun to be able to 'communicate' with her in these ways. She continues to babble, although this month it seems like she expects us to understand her sometimes. I feel bad that we still have no idea what she's trying to say! She has added intonation to her speech patterns so that we can tell when she is asking a question or making a statement.

Hannah got her third tooth this month and the fourth is just about ready to pop through the gums. Thankfully these ones don't seem to be causing any problems.

Hannah has started to really play with toys this month. She is observing how to make things work and will mimic what others do to get the results she wants. Nathan has a little zoo that she loves to play with right now.

We have started sibling play time this month. While it usually consists of the two kids playing with separate things in the same room, occasionally they cross paths and it's fun to see them playing together. So far I stay in the room for this play time but will hopefully begin to step out for a few minutes at a time in the next few weeks.

Hannah still does not enjoy being read to as much as Nathan did at this age. I think it's due in part to her personality - she is so much more rambunctious than he was. The other part is probably because she hasn't been read to as much as Nathan had been by this time. We've instituted two reading times in our day and I'm hoping she will grow to love those times.

As I mentioned in her 1 year summary, I really wanted to work on Hannah's independent play time this month. Since she was sick for basically the first three weeks of this month we were in survival mode and didn't get much done with this. The past week I have made a concerted effort to try independent play time twice a day and she is doing much better. We have started with 15 minutes at a time and will work up to 30 minutes. Yesterday she did both 15 minute sessions without crying!

I think that's about it for Hannah this month. She is still changing so much from day to day that this has become almost a novel!

For the upcoming month I want to continue working on Hannah's independent play time. In addition to that I will work with her on using a spoon. I think that is enough for one month :)

Yucky weather for gardening

2010-04-30T18:29:00.005-06:00

This week the weather has been really gross. It's been raining, ridiculously windy, and it is calling for snow tonight! Eeks. Despite the bad weather, my garlic that I planted outside is starting to grow. I was so surprised to see three little spikes come out of the ground. Nothing yet for the green onions or garlic, but I'm not surprised with the cold temperatures we've seen.

Indoors, however, things have been going really well. My biggest success this week was that all three of my pots of rosemary (planted way back on March 22nd) grew little seedlings this week! After faithfully watering them for over a month and also after attempting to start some new seeds on damp paper towel with no signs of progress, I googled to see if I could figure out what I was doing wrong. What I found out was that rosemary is generally propagated through cuttings and that the seeds often have a germination rate of only 5%! Although by this point I had pretty much decided I would just have to buy a rosemary plant, I continued to water my little peat pots. I was so excited when I saw the first little hint of green in one pot and couldn't believe it when all three pots started with bits of green. There are currently five seedlings growing.

Most of my other crops are springing up this week as well. Parsley really took off with about 15 little seedlings showing up. Lettuce continues to grow quickly (I have 4 pots of that ready to be put outside whenever the weather warms up some). I have two pots of tomatoes and a few peppers as well that have all shown up this week. I'm still waiting on the broccoli, although there is a hint of green in one of the pots. Only the green onions have failed to make an appearance in my peat pots, but they are more of an experiment now, since I planted bulbs outside last week.

I was getting tired of watering a couple dozen peat pots every day (sometimes twice a day!) so today I transferred my chives, parsley, and rosemary to the pots I had bought for them. They are going to remain indoors (although I'm thinking about setting them out some throughout the summer) so I figured it didn't really matter when I moved them. I had 4 peat pots of chives, 3 peat pots of rosemary, and 3 peat pots of chives. Each herb is now in its own decorative pot. They are sitting on my kitchen table for now but will eventually move to the living room when I get a shelf for them.

Kumon Workbooks

2010-04-29T20:27:00.004-06:00

On a blog I found recently, they posted about a Kumon workbook on having children practice cutting. I had never heard of these books before so of course I went to check them out on Amazon. With Nathan quickly approaching his third birthday I knew I wanted to start helping him learn to read and write (obviously starting with the very basics!). He already recognizes most of the letters (uppercase and lowercase) and can count to 10, but it's not something we have spent much time practicing. While I wanted to integrate some learning time into our schedule, I was not willing to do a bunch of preparation time for it, especially considering my lack of creativity and the arrival of baby #3 in the not-too-distant future. I decided to take the plunge and order Nathan a couple of the Kumon workbooks to try. Having just finished my BEd coursework, I know how 'out of fashion' worksheets are in the current teaching literature, but I think for skills that require lots of practice they have their place. Plus since we are working one-on-one, the pace will be appropriate and he should be challenged.

The book we have started with is called "My First Book of Tracing." It is apparently the first book in a whole pyramid of workbooks. The little subtitle at the bottom of the cover says "mastering basic pencil skills builds a firm foundation for writing letters and numbers." Prior to starting this book Nathan liked to colour but had no interest in staying inside lines or anything.

My first day with this book I had a dilemma. I can not figure out if Nathan is going to be right- or left-handed. I have observed him eating, colouring, and doing lots of other things, and he seems to randomly choose a hand each time. In my heart I thought he might be left-handed, so we tried with his left hand the first day. We decided to do one sheet (both sides, so two pages) per day. We spent a few minutes learning how to hold the pencil properly and then he drew the first few lines. Most of the exercises in the book have the child draw a line from one picture to the matching picture elsewhere on the page. The path they are to follow is usually white with the surrounding area coloured. Nathan did about as well as I had expected. His lines were quite wiggly and I had to keep reminding him of how to hold the pencil. The funny thing was how much he loved it! He wanted to do the whole book! I took that as a good sign but said we would put the book away and do the next page tomorrow.

The next day, after a chat with Mom, I decided to try his right hand. Since I haven't been able to figure out his handedness, I figured we might as well pick the right hand and if he is really left-handed he will switch back before long. His lines were much less wiggly with his right hand and again he loved doing it.

Since then we've done about 15 pages and the lines he is drawing have gotten progressively more difficult (from horizontal / vertical -> diagonal -> curved -> zig zag) and the paths he is drawing within have become narrower. His pencil control has really improved although it is still far from perfect. The best part is how much he enjoys it! There is never a day that goes by that he doesn't ask to do the next page once he finishes the one for the day.

A sheet only takes us about 5 minutes, so it is only a small part of our learning time for the day, but I am so happy with the results and his reaction to it. Hopefully these books (and the other things we are teaching him) will help prepare him for success in his academic life. I loved school as a kid, and I think a lot of it came from being well-prepared before I ever entered kindergarten.

Attempt at a schedule

2010-04-25T19:42:00.003-06:00

I used to be so good at scheduling ... before Hannah was born Nathan and I had a very predictable routine every day. He had a time each day to play on his own in his room, to play with me, to nap, etc ... Once Hannah came our schedule got a bit crazier, and with the impending move things just kind of went out the window. Nap times are still fairly consistent, but all other aspects of the schedule went out the window to a certain extent.

The constraints we are dealing with for our new schedule are mostly related to Peter's shifts. When he is on nights our days are much less structured than when he is on days. We do more family outings, so I have to leave time in the day that is flexible to do that. Since he usually sleeps until around 10 when he works nights, I have tried to plan several of the elements of the day that I think are necessary before Hannah gets up from her nap at 11:30.

Peter also either works until 6 pm or leaves for work at that time most days of the week. Our supper time switches based on that. On nights he works until 6 we eat later, and on nights when he has to be at work for 6 we eat earlier.

The last consideration is there is a mom's group that meets twice a week from 9:30 am - 11:30 am. I guess the only option at the moment for that is to go off-schedule one day a week. Twice a week would be too much for the kids right now.

So, with all that in mind, here is my tentative schedule. I'm sure it will change as we try it out.

7:00 AM - Everyone up and eat breakfast
7:45 AM - Baths for the kids, dressed
8:30 AM - Hannah will have independent playtime while Nathan helps me with whatever daily chores we have
9:00 AM - Sibling playtime. I will have to supervise this for a bit as Nathan has been pushy lately and because it's somewhat new to them.
9:30 AM - Hannah goes down for her nap, Nathan has learning time / game time with me
10:00 AM - Independent playtime for Nathan
11:00 AM - Help Nathan clean up toys in his room, then get Hannah up
11:30 AM - Prepare, eat, and clean up lunch
12:15 PM - Play outside if at all possible! Run errands around town, go to library, etc ...
2:00 PM - Nap for Hannah, rest time for Nathan.
3:00 PM - Free playtime for Nathan
3:30 PM - Hannah up from nap, small snack for both, reading time with Mom or Dad
4:00 PM - TV time for Nathan, independent playtime for Hannah. If we are eating early, I will prep supper during this time. If not I will clean during this time.
4:30 PM - TV time for both
5:00 PM - If eating early ... supper, structured playtime at table, jammies (clean up kitchen during structured playtime)
If eating late ... structured playtime at table, jammies, supper (prep supper during structured playtime)
6:45 PM - Story time
7:00 PM - Teeth for both and bed for Hannah, Nathan independent playtime in his room. He often wants to play in bed before sleeping. I'm hoping giving him 30 minutes to play in his room before bed might help him to get to sleep faster.
7:30 PM - Nathan bed.

And I have to add a third to this mix in less than 6 months?? Questioning my sanity at the moment ... lol.

Weekly Round-up

2010-04-25T11:09:00.002-06:00

I just realized my last post was my 100th on this blog! Pretty cool. I'm really enjoying keeping up with it this time around. Hopefully it lasts.

This week has been a pretty tough one in our household. It started out great. The weather has been fantastic and we have been taking full advantage of it. On Tuesday Hannah had her 12 month needles. She seemed fine after them until Wednesday afternoon when she started with a fever. Thursday afternoon she started with vomiting and diarrhea and that continued basically until now. I think she's on the mend finally. She has been able to keep down some liquids and a few Arrow Root crackers this morning. My biggest concern was dehydration. I called the health line yesterday and they told me I should give her clear liquids, but not water. The problem ... Hannah only drinks milk and water. She turns her nose up at everything else! We discovered she will eat a popsicle every once in a while, so between that and the bit of food she's getting, I've decided water will have to do it for drinks. I think since she's getting sugar and calories elsewhere that the water will be ok.

Wednesday afternoon I had my monthly doctor's appointment. Everything looks good and we heard the baby's heartbeat again. Yay! I got my ultrasound date and Peter is trying to switch his work around so he can make it.

Since Hannah's been sick we've stuck pretty close to home for most of the week. Peter and Nathan went to help a neighbour build a fence yesterday (they have a 3-year-old boy for Nathan to play with).

I planted a few things in the garden this week, which was fun, and have had quite a bit more success with my seeds indoors. Less than a month until the last frost date!

Goals:
Despite Hannah being sick, I got my kitchen cleaned up every day except last night. I feel really good about this habit - it might actually stick!

I did better with reading to Hannah and doing Nathan's workbook with him. I'm not sure I reached 5 days for each of them, but it was definitely more than before. I am currently working on making up a daily schedule for our family again. I love when we are on a schedule - just working it around Peter's shifts has been tricky. I'm planning on posting a draft schedule sometime today.

And a new goal for this week ... I want to do my weekly tasks according to the calendar I've been following this week. They are:

Monday - change sheets and bath linens, laundry (super easy day)
Tuesday - vacuum & dust (upstairs); clean bathroom
Wednesday - laundry; wipe fingerprints off appliances windows, door knobs, light switches
Thursday - vacuum & dust (downstairs and bedrooms - this is where our carpet is), kitchen prep / clean out fridge
Friday - laundry; mop kitchen, bathroom, and hallway

This is slightly different than what is shown on the link above so it fits my house and our lifestyle better.

So ... that's my plan for the week. Peter works both days and nights this week, so it will truly test any schedule we put in place.

Pregnancy Summary - Week 16

2010-04-22T11:12:00.000-06:00

It is so hard for me to believe I'm already 16 weeks into this pregnancy! The time is flying so quickly. I said that to my doctor yesterday and she commented that it was still early, but to me I'm almost halfway done.

My biggest stressor with this pregnancy was acquiring a vehicle we could fit all three kids in, and we took care of that in the past month. We still have to buy another crib and an infant car seat, but I'm waiting until a community yard sale in May to see if they have anything.

I've started feeling the baby move a bit when I go to bed. I'm still sleeping on my stomach (I feel guilty but it's not uncomfortable yet and it's so much easier to fall asleep that way!), and I find that's when I feel some small kicks. It's so much earlier than with Nathan, but I think that's normal for subsequent pregnancies.

I got the date for my ultrasound - May 18th. Peter is supposed to work that day so he's going to try and get it changed. I'm not sure what we're going to do with the kids - they may come watch, too. It could be quite the party in the ultrasound room! We don't want to find out the baby's gender this time, but I will have to keep my conviction when we're actually there. The temptation will be so strong!

It has been so hot here lately and I have no maternity shorts!! Since Hannah and Nathan were both due in the spring I never had need of them (or a maternity bathing suit), but I definitely have to get some this time. I think we're going to take a trip to Regina early next week so I can buy a dress for my brother's wedding and some shorts and tank tops.

I'm still taking Diclectin for the nausea. I missed a pill last week and was violently ill all day. I can't believe it's still that bad, but I guess I'll just keep taking the pills and try skipping another one in a month or so.

Quick gardening update

2010-04-22T11:02:00.000-06:00

April 21st:
- put three lettuce pots outside in shade for 2 hours in late afternoon. They are really sprouting fast!

April 22nd:
- planted 1 pot of lettuce
- planted 1 pot of peppers (from seeds put on paper towel a week ago)
- put 3 lettuce pots outside in partial sun for 2 hours, left out in shade for another 4
- can see sprouts in 1 pot of broccoli and 1 of parsley

Unbelievable

2010-04-21T08:34:00.006-06:00

The weather for the past week has been unbelievable! It's been in the 20s all week long so we've been taking advantage of the good weather. We've visited a playground almost every day and also spent many hours in the backyard. Nathan has a sandbox back there and we're hoping to add a few more things for the kids to do over the next several months. The yard is completely fenced in so it is a great place to play.

Hannah can definitely be considered our daredevil. I decided to try her on the slide and she loved it! She would wiggle her bum at the top until she started to slide down and then would giggle the whole way down.

Nathan has really started to enjoy the playground this year. He can use most of the equipment and is much less timid than last year. There is an elementary school just a few minutes from our house and we make use of their equipment when school is out.

Sorry to bore those of you not interested in gardening, but here's my quick stats:

April 19th:
- planted green onion bulbs outside

April 20th:
- planted spinach outside
- planted garlic outside

April 21st:
- transplanted 1 pepper seed to a jiffy pot
- transplanted 2 tomato seeds to a jiffy pot
- put out some more parsley, chives, rosemary, tomato, pepper, and lettuce seeds to sprout on paper towel

Gardening progress ... and setbacks

2010-04-17T20:44:00.004-06:00

Today was a big day in the day of my vegetable garden. Last night we bought all the stuff we needed to put together my three boxes. I decided to do 1 4'x4' box and 2 4'x2' boxes, as I needed space in the 'back' rows for climbing plants.

This afternoon Peter started cutting the wood and assembling the boxes while Nathan and I mixed the soil. The square foot garden book calls for a very specific mixture of 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost / composted manure, and 1/3 peat moss. The measurements are supposed to be done by volume, but the only thing I could find sold that way was the peat moss. The other two I had to estimate based on the size of the bag. Nathan had a great time helping me mix (after we were done I saw the book said not to let kids play on it as it will crush the vermiculite particles ... oops!)

As we were doing this I remembered that my grandfather's garden always had these little white specks in it. As a kid I thought it was just fertilizer, but I wonder if he used vermiculite, too. I'll have to ask him next time I call.

I attached landscape fabric to the bottom of all the boxes. I left the front row of the 4x4 box open on the bottom as I plan to grow carrots, garlic, and onions in it. Here is one of the 2x4 boxes before it was filled.

And here are my three boxes all filled and ready for their 12"x12" grids to be attached. That will be a project for another day - hopefully sometime this week.

I can't wait to start planting!! I bought some onion bulbs that are supposed to grow into green onions last night, so I'll plant those asap. I'm also going to try planting some garlic soon, even though I know it should have been planted in the fall.

I want to keep track of how my seed starting goes, so here is the setup I am using right now and what is happening at the moment:

Nathan pulled up all my plants I had started from before :( so I'm counting that a total loss even though I am still caring for some of them to see what happens. My system right now is to put seeds on damp paper towel on a cookie sheet until I see roots. As soon as roots appear I fill a Jiffy pot about 3/4 full with seed starter mix, wet it, add a couple of seeds, add a bit of seed starter on top, and re-water. I really do not like the seed starter soil. I find the water just pools on top or runs straight out the bottom. It is really hard to get the soil a good 'damp-ness.'

So ... April 14th on paper towel I started:
- chives
- tomatoes
- peppers
- green onions (just as an experiment - counting on the bulbs for actual onions)
- parsley
- rosemary
- lettuce
- broccoli

April 15th:
- transplanted 4 lettuce pots (a few seeds in each) as roots were breaking out of seeds

April 17th:
- transplanted 2 pots of broccoli
- transplanted 2 pots of green onions (from seed)
- transplanted 1 pot of chives
- lettuce shoots visible in 2 pots (not sure if this is good or bad - they are among the ones Nathan played with)

My plan for the herbs is to keep them indoors (transferring them to bigger pots once they are big enough). The lettuce I'm going to try and put outdoors once it gets big enough - the book says it can be transplanted outdoors up to 5 weeks before the last frost (that would be this week). Broccoli and green onions will also be hardened off and transplanted outside when they are big enough. At least, those are my thoughts right now ...

Weekly Round-up

2010-04-16T22:06:00.004-06:00

I put Hannah's hair in two pigtails on Friday for the first time. As I was attempting to get a picture of her hair, she gave me this one instead. I thought it was too cute!

This week we've had a few discipline issues with Nathan. The worst came on Friday when he 'played' with my seedlings for the garden, obviously not to their benefit. I'm not sure what will come of them yet, but I doubt many of them will grow. Nathan seems to be really testing his boundaries lately. Hopefully if we just keep being as consistent as possible he will realize what we expect of him and that those expectations don't change from day to day.

I forgot my Diclectin one morning this week and it proved to me that I still need to be taking it. I was soooo sick! I guess I'll stay on 3 pills per day for a little while longer.

Saturday and Sunday the weather was beautiful here. We spent most of the day on Saturday outside. We took the kids to the playground at the elementary school and they both had a blast. Hannah is going to be our little daredevil, I think. She loved going down the slide! We came home and worked in the backyard on my vegetable garden. A bit more work this week and they should be ready for some seeds / plants!

I think the good weather is supposed to hold up for most of this week. Peter works nights all week so we should have lots of fun family time. While he's working in the evenings I should have lots of stitching time.

Goals:
I did quite well (for me) with my goal of making sure my kitchen was cleaned up before bed. I did it 5 out of 7 evenings and it is clean again tonight. I will continue with that goal.

In addition, I will make sure I read with Hannah and have Nathan do his worksheet (more on this later) at least 5 days this week. I was / am so good about reading with Nathan, but for some reason do it less with Hannah. Nathan loves his worksheets but I am very inconsistent with getting him to do them every day. These are goals that will help me keep the kids' schedules a bit more consistent, since they seem to be 'off' on weeks that Peter works nights.

Stitching update

2010-04-16T21:13:00.003-06:00

I started my first cycle of this rotation on March 31st and finished tonight. 16 days and 24 hours of stitching ... not too shabby! I have really been in a stitching mood lately and am enjoying myself. Peter goes back in for his week of nights starting Monday, so that will contribute to my hours on this next cycle.

Here are updated progress pics ...

Carousel (Theresa Wentzler)
Started: January 2007 (estimated at 176 hours completed)

I am not looking forward to the backstitching on this picture!!

Celtic Summer (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 6 hours)

I have started highlighting my pictures as I go. I find it saves so much time trying to figure out what stitches have been done. Of course it means I have to copy all my patterns, but I like to do that anyway to avoid ruining the original.

Nativity - Centre Panel (Marbek)
Started: unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (?? + 6 hours)

The more I work on this, the more I realize how huge it is! Thankfully this rotation I did mostly with DMC and avoided the Kreiniks.

I got a colour photocopy of this pattern at Staples with an hour left on this rotation. It is so much easier having an 8 1/2 x 11 to work with instead of the massive pattern! I can now highlight what I've finished ... and I don't have to flip over the pattern to read the symbol legend. Win, win!

Dance of the Roses (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Feb. 2007 (?? + 6 hours)

This is a pattern I still have to photocopy. I feel like the skirt on this girl will stitch up really quickly.

Enough typing ... back to stitching ...

Square Foot Gardening

2010-04-15T19:22:00.003-06:00

A friend I've met here in SK brought me one of her gardening books to read on Sunday. It's about a method called square foot gardening. I had heard of it in passing before, but thought it was something really radical for some reason. I took a quick read through the book yesterday and it makes a lot of sense! The main idea of the book is to design your garden that you can reach in from outside to plant, tend, and harvest everything. This eliminates the rows and, according to the author, allows you to grow the 100% of the produce that you could in a 'traditional' garden in 20% of the space.

What I absolutely love about the book is that it is very step-by-step. Gathering gardening information from friends, family, and online, I got lots of good tips, but not a start-to-finish 'here's how to grow a vegetable garden.' The author outlines exactly what to use for soil (this method does not use any of the existing soil), when to plant various vegetables based on the last frost date for your region, how to build the garden boxes and trellises, and even how to start plants indoors and how to transplant. As a logical/mathematical thinker it was awesome to find a book with all of the information that I needed to get started.

Although no existing soil is used in this method, it really does not seem like it will cost much more to start this type of garden than to get started with the traditional row garden. I figured out that I can plant what I was going to plant in my 5' x 30' garden in two 4' x 4' garden boxes. Due to the amount of climbing plants I want to grow I may make the boxes 8' x 2', but that is yet to be decided.

An update on my seed starts. Things were going great ... and then they weren't :( Of all that I planted, I currently have 3 peat pots of peppers growing, and 1 pot of chives. It was a bit disheartening, but I think I figured out a bit of what I did wrong, so today I started a bunch more things including tomatoes, broccoli, and green onions.

One of the weird things (that I would love advice on) about the book is that it says you can plant some things (such as broccoli and lettuce) outside before the last frost. Anyone have any experience with this?? It sounds crazy to me ...

Many, many more posts to come on the garden I am sure :)

Bathroom renovation - planning and preparing

2010-04-13T20:06:00.004-06:00

Here is what our downstairs bathroom looked like a few weeks ago ...

... and that is what it still looks like today. Despite a lack of visible progress, we have done some preparations for putting this room back together. Last week Peter met with a plumber who told us we can buy a shower with the drain in a place that will fit with our floor. As a result, we don't have to move the pipes into the ceiling. This means we don't have to pay a plumber to come in and do anything. Money saved is always good!

Yesterday we headed (with the new truck!) to Regina to pick up fixtures for the bathroom. We bought a shower, vanity, faucets for both of those, tile, fan, and a few other miscellaneous items.

The next step in the plan is to fix the electrical. When we moved in, there was no outlet in the bathroom (just one in the light over the sink). The light over the sink and the fan each had their own switch, but the light by the shower was on a pull cord. Peter's plan is to put the light by the shower on the same circuit as the fan so that they are turned on and off together. Then he will put in a GFCI breaker and outlet for the bathroom, and of course install the new fan. Once the insides are in order we can start putting things back together.

There seem to be so many steps between now and a finished room, but the bathroom will be by far the most complicated renovation we do. Once it's done the rest should go more quickly.

Weekly Round-up

2010-04-11T13:34:00.005-06:00

There are lots of little things that happen throughout the weeks that don't warrant their own post, but I'd like to have somewhere to mention them (or post a random picture of the kids), so I think I'll try doing a weekly hodge podge post. I'll highlight some of the things we did that week (so I have a record for my own journaling) and then pick something to work on for the week ahead.

At the beginning of this week we were in Calgary, so it was not a normal start to the week. Hannah was getting over her first ear infection (Nathan's never had one!) and sleep was starting to get back to normal.

Wednesday was a recuperation day. The kids and I stayed home while Peter went to work. Thursday we bought a new truck! We needed something that would fit three car seats, and this will allow us to 'truck' stuff back from Regina and take stuff to the dump as we do our renovations.

Since we had the new vehicle, Thursday night after Peter got home from work we took the kids for a drive to a neighbouring town and got some ice cream. They both had a blast.

The wind picked up Thursday night and was crazy!! for the next two days. I hated to go out, so we did as little as possible outside the house.

Friday morning I went to get my hair cut (finally). I am very happy with how it turned out. She did a great job and going to a new hairdresser is so scary! When I got home I noticed Hannah had developed a rash all over her. I was worried it might be a reaction to the medication she was taking for her ear infection, but it's stayed the same since then so I don't think it's anything serious.

Saturday we took the kids to a book sale at the library. You could fill a bag for $3, so we got tons of books for the kids and for me. What a great way to expand our library at home!

This morning we went to church and Hannah finally spent the whole time in the nursery without crying!! Since we've arrived she's had really bad separation anxiety. I hope this is the beginning of the end of that.

Nathan continues to do really well with his potty training. We even took him out a few times this week in his 'big boy' underwear. So far no accidents in the car seat or while we're out. While we were in Calgary he also became willing to use a regular toilet. It's so much easier than constantly emptying the potty, and it gives us more flexibility to take him out.

Hannah learned to point this week! It is so cute to watch her and it's helpful as she can point instead of scream when she wants something :)

Goal: This week I will make sure my dishes are done and my kitchen cleaned up before bed each night.

Presentable ... not perfect

2010-04-10T16:33:00.000-06:00

At this point in my life, with two little ones and another on the way, keeping my house presentable is the concern. I gave up on perfection when ... come to think of it, I never really tried for it in the first place!

Those who know me well know I've been an avid fan of flylady forever (well, technically since just before I got married in 2001, when I wanted to impress Peter with my housekeeping skills but needed lots of help!). I still think the system is great, but now that I'm home I wanted something with more well-defined tasks for each day and one that would make sure I got my deep cleaning done.

I stumbled across JustMommies Home Organization Plan a few weeks ago and so far I love it. My favourite feature is that all my tasks (other than the daily routines) are displayed on one page. On this printable page for each month there is a monthly calendar with a task for every day (there are two catch-up days per week), a weekly plan, and a part of the house to work on for that month with appropriate deep cleaning tasks. It is so similar in theory to flylady, I just find the format is easier for me at this point in my life. Flylady is more of a whole life approach and has so much flexibility that sometimes it was overwhelming. This is just housework-related and is so concrete that I don't have to spend any mental energy figuring out what to do when.

My second favourite feature is the afternoon tidy included in the mid-day routine. Since I'm home, mid-afternoon is a perfect time to tidy up the main living areas and make sure the kitchen is clean before supper is put on the table. I usually start this while the kids nap / rest, and Nathan helps me finish when he gets up. If I make sure to do the afternoon tidy I have very little to do after the kids go to bed. Very nice!

It's been just over 2 weeks and my house has stayed relatively tidy. In fact, I think there was only one time since I've started that I would have been embarrassed if someone had dropped in. Before starting this plan my house was rarely presentable so it is making a huge difference. And, considering we plan to do major renovating this spring, having the basic housekeeping under control is a necessity...

(And yes, that is my new kitchen in the above picture ... it needs some major updating ... and it makes me sad when I think of what I left ...

... so I try not to think about it too much! Will post pictures once we refinish the cupboards and replace the countertop.)

Note: This post was written a few weeks ago ... since then I've lapsed a bit but am just about back on track. I still think the program is good ... just need that second trimester energy!

Nathan and his puzzles

2010-04-07T17:51:00.001-06:00

Sometime this fall Nathan became enamoured with puzzles. He had received a few of the wooden ones with the pieces that are cut out and fit into the holes as gifts for his first birthday, and then for his second birthday he got a round floor puzzle and a wooden Cars puzzle, both with inter-locking pieces.

Both the floor puzzle and the Cars puzzle have about 12 pieces and he became proficient at each of them. A few weeks ago Peter bought him a 46-piece Thomas floor puzzle. He did really well with it his first attempt, although it requires him to stay on task for much longer than he has for previous puzzles. The section of tracks initially gave him a bit of trouble but now he can pretty much do it all on his own. Here he is after a successful completion ...

As a math-lover myself, I love to see him so involved in a puzzle and to see how he works through the placement of the pieces. Thankfully he talks to himself non-stop while he works so I get lots of insight into his thought processes :) Interestingly, I have noticed that his natural approach to puzzles is not the way adults would do it (or at least how I would do it). When faced with a jigsaw puzzle I first turn over all the pieces, then find the corners, then the edge pieces, etc ... He looks at the pieces until he finds something he recognizes - usually a face or main piece of one of the trains - and then looks for other pieces that go near that one. He's starting to recognize what corner an edge pieces are, but it has taken a him a long time to figure out that they are different from the centre ones. Maybe eventually he'll start using that information to help him solve the puzzles.

I think the 46 piece puzzle is about the right level of challenge for him right now. It is difficult for him, but not enough to be frustrating. It will be fun to see how his logic changes as he is able to do puzzles with more and more pieces.

A quick trip west

2010-04-06T19:55:00.010-06:00

Since we are living in the prairies for the time being, we've decided to take advantage of the opportunity to explore parts of Western Canada that we've never been to. Until Sunday, our current hometown was the furthest west I'd ever been. When we got Peter's newest work schedule it showed that he would have 3 days off in a row. Since Calgary is a 7 hour drive away and it's somewhere we both had at the top of our list of places to check out, we headed there early Sunday morning for a whirlwind trip.

We arrived around supper time Sunday night, checked into our hotel, and promptly headed to Olive Garden for supper. Yum!! It is definitely one of my favourite restaurants. I'm incredibly boring and always get the Chicken Scampi, but it's just so good. We headed back to the hotel and Peter and Nathan went for a swim before bed.

As you can see, Nathan had a great time. This picture was taken around 9 pm - he's usually in bed by 7! We all conked out around 10.

Monday morning we were up bright and early as we had many things to accomplish during our only full day in the city. First up was the Calgary Zoo. We arrived around 10 and it was still pretty chilly. I hadn't thought to pack hats and mittens, so we improvised until it warmed up. Here are some of my favourites from the zoo. Poor Nathan walked pretty much the whole time and was dead on his feet by the time we left around 1.

For the first half hour at the zoo, every 30 seconds Nathan would ask, "Can we see the giraffes?" After covering several exhibits and seeing no sign of giraffes we asked a zoo volunteer and thankfully found our way to the giraffes. (Despite the big bright spot in this picture I still love it.)

When Nathan was obviously too tired to walk anymore we headed for lunch. We had found out that there is a Pizza Delight restaurant in Calgary. I thought I had said good-bye to their pizza, garlic fingers, and caesar salad when we left the maritimes, but I was able to get a taste of home at their out-of-the-way franchise in a subdivision of Calgary. Yum!!

Then it was off to CrossIron Mills Mall - a very new mall (I think) just north of Calgary. It was not yet on the GPS maps we borrowed from a friend, so we had to find it the old-fashioned way with a paper map.

We walked in to the first store, Bass Pro Shops, and it was an experience. This is a picture of the sign just inside the door:
We browsed the shops of the mall until it closed at 9. Hannah enjoyed the car ride we treated she and Nathan to (Nathan was not very happy once the car started moving).

After a very long day (Hannah lost 3 soothers in the mall and Nathan lost one of the new cars we bought him. Hero daddy dashed into Toys 'R Us and bought him a replacement 5 minutes before they closed) we headed back to the hotel to turn in for the night.

Here is one last picture of Hannah and Nathan playing in bed this morning before we got going for the day.

After a final swim in the pool for Nathan and Peter, we got on the road. We arrived back home around supper time tonight. I'm sure we'll all sleep well tonight!

Hannah - 1 year summary

2010-04-01T19:36:00.000-06:00

It's hard to believe this all happened a year ago today! It has been a huge year in the life of our family but none of the events throughout the year compare to her arrival.

Hannah's first year has been so very different from Nathan's. From the very beginning she was her own 'little one' (my nickname for her which seems to have stuck). She is much more animated and less laid-back than her brother, which has made for some trying moments but lots of fun ones as well. With her, she is either high or low - there is no in between for her.

Hannah has generally been an excellent sleeper and has thankfully rolled with the changes throughout her first year without too many glitches in that. The exception to that has been teething - it seems to really affect her night-time sleep. She has her two bottom teeth at the moment and we are hoping that more are ready to break through since she has had some interruptions in her sleep over the past few weeks.

Hannah is scooting on her bum all over the place. She is generally much more stubborn than her brother and this has caused her to move a bit earlier than he did. She has no interest in standing at the moment and generally cries when we try and put her in that position. In spite of that she is fairly steady on her feet and I imagine she will walk earlier than Nathan's 17 months. I hope she walks earlier as I do not want to be carrying her everywhere when I'm 8 months pregnant!

Hannah's fine motor skills seem to be a bit ahead of schedule. Her pincer grasp especially has been fully developed since about 9 months. This has allowed her to feed herself all manner of food and means we can all eat at the same time! I have been much less strict about what foods were introduced to her before a year than I was with Nathan. Thankfully no sign of allergies. The only major food she hasn't tried that is a possible concern is peanut butter. I think we'll wait until a trip to the city before trying that.

Hannah is very vocal. She makes many, many different sounds, few of which seem to correspond to anything identifiable. The two words that we understand so far are 'mama' and 'dada.' I imagine that will change quickly over the next several months.

Over the next little while I want to work on Hannah's independent playtime. Right now she will play in her room happily for a few minutes. I would like to work up to 30 minutes at a time, maybe twice a day. She is not great at playing on her own (she needs to be entertained more than Nathan did at this age) and hopefully working on this will help.

Still stitching

2010-03-31T21:36:00.012-06:00

Since my last cross-stitch progress post was over three years ago, I figure we're about due for another one! I just finished stitching a piece (can't post online at them moment ...) so I am ready for a new rotation. Despite the long time between updates, I have not given up stitching (I finally finished Village Skaters!! It's not framed, but still ...). Schoolwork often took precedence, but now that we are settled in our new house and Peter is working several night shifts a month, my stitching progress has picked up once again.

The last piece I finished I kept careful track of the hours I spent working on it. I really liked being able to go back and see how long it took me to complete. My new rotation is going to be based on the number of hours worked. I think 6 hours is a good amount of time to work on one project before switching to the next. On an average stitching night I will get around 2 hours in, while on a good stitching night I could manage 3. If I am close to 6 hours on one project when I sit down to stitch for a full evening I will go on to the next one and leave the last 15 minutes for the next round of the rotation. Confused yet? I made up a cool spreadsheet to help me keep track.

For my rotation I plan to have four projects (I think these are my only WIPs ... is that possible?). They are:

Carousel (Theresa Wentzler)
Started: January 2007 (estimated at 170 hours completed)

The original plan for this picture was to go in the nursery, but when Nathan turned out to be a boy I thought the picture was a bit girl-y for a boy's room (still do!). I think it's perfect for a little girl's room, though, so once it is finished it will go in Hannah's room.

Celtic Summer (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (no time estimate)

For the longest time I was missing one of the specialty threads for this picture. It was on backorder and still hasn't arrived. Somehow in the past year I've managed to procure the missing thread (I don't remember getting it, but I have it now), so I am much more happy to work on it. I hate having to skip sections because of a missing thread. I finished Celtic Christmas a few years ago and can't wait to have the whole series for my wall! They are such a fun stitch.

Nativity - Centre Panel (Marbek)
Started: unknown but later than Feb. 2007 (no time estimate)

This is the centre panel of the large, 5-panel, Nativity scene by Marbek. I imagine it will be finished about the time the kids leave home. And then of course it will have to be framed. Oh well, it will be beautiful. Working with the metallic Kreiniks just might kill me, though.

Dance of the Roses (Lavender & Lace)
Started: Feb. 2007 (no time estimate)

I think this picture is very pretty, but I've kind of fallen out of love with it. We'll see if my sentiments change before I finish it. It's an easy stitch so I don't mind working on it, I just don't see it on my wall in the future.

And that's it for my progress pictures and my rotation schedule. Happy stitching!

Springtime fun

2010-03-30T18:00:00.000-06:00

The past few days have been absolutely beautiful, if a bit windy. Despite the wind, we've spent time outside with the kids the past few days. Peter is on his 6-shift stretch of nights. That makes for lots of family time.

Yesterday we played for a while in the backyard. Hannah sat on her mats ... until the wind picked up one side and blew it on top of her head! Then she sat in the stroller for awhile. Nathan played in his sandbox while Peter worked on organizing his workshop and I 'played' in the garden (basically just breaking up the soil - trying to get it to dry faster?). After that he and Nathan played some backyard hockey. I'm going to try putting a video in this post for the first time ... wish me luck!

Today after the kids' rest time / naps we took them to a playground nearby. I think this was one of Hannah's first times on a swing. She seemed to really enjoy it. Nathan liked the slide the best. What a difference between last summer and this spring - he is so much less timid on the equipment.

Here are a couple of my favourites from the day. Many more can be found on my flickr site.

Renovations - Day 1

2010-03-29T18:51:00.000-06:00

When we looked at this house, we knew that the basement needed a lot of work. The bathroom was absolutely disgusting and we planned to completely re-do it as our first step toward a usable basement. Today we got started. We had some grand ideas to turn the fixtures around and combine a storage room with the bathroom to make it bigger. Here are a few pictures of what the looked like this morning (the shower was sooooo gross!)

Would you want to shower in that? Plus, the shower was super short. We were curious as to why ...

After half a day of ripping out fixtures and paneling, the bathroom now looks like this ...

Much better :) Now we can start to figure out how we're going to put it back together. Because of those drain pipes in the wall that go through the concrete, our idea of combining the bathroom with the storage area won't work, but the bathroom is still an ok size.

Another glitch we have to sort out is that the people who originally plumbed the bathroom decided that instead of putting pipes through the floor joists they would simply run them under the floor joists and lower the ceiling in the bathroom. We would like those pipes moved up.

The last concern (so far) is that we think the drain for the shower is too close to the corner to fit a regular shower. The original shower was up off the floor and had an S-shaped piece of pipe to move the drain to the right place. We have heard that the drain may be in the correct place for a tub, which is fine with us. There is space in the room for a tub to be put in instead of a shower, so if that would work we'll do that. If not, we're open to suggestions!

One last picture of Daddy and his little helper ...

Next step is to contact a plumber to see what they can tell us about moving pipes around ...

Hannah's 1st birthday party!

2010-03-28T19:56:00.006-06:00

Today was the day we celebrated Hannah's 1st birthday with friends. Her birthday isn't technically until Thursday, but since Peter works nights all week we thought this would work better.

Here is a picture before everyone arrived (Peter bought her the cute headband):

After everyone arrived (4 couples and 7 kids in addition to ours :) ), we brought out the cake:

Yes, she was a little scared of it.

And ... after eating it:

I don't like posting pictures of other peoples' kids, so I won't post any others of the party. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all the kids! They played with balloons, coloured hard-boiled eggs, and of course had cake and juice. It was really kind of all our new friends to come celebrate with us and it was great to get to have some time to visit with them. People here have been so welcoming.

Here's a picture of the cake just after I finished decorating it:

And ... a picture I couldn't resist taking the other day when I woke the birthday girl from her nap. This is the first time I've ever seen her sleep on her side.

Beginning a vegetable garden

2010-03-26T15:52:00.001-06:00

Between all the work of building our last house and getting some grass in, I did not have a chance to plant a vegetable garden, although I always wanted to. Now that we've moved to a house that is basically finished, although renovations are in progress I decided that this is the year to give it a shot.

After googling tons, talking to a few local people who have grown successful gardens, soliciting tips on facebook, and chatting with my Mom to clear up a few things that had me confused, I finally got to get my hands dirty today (March 22nd). Yes, it is still way, way too early to be thinking about planting outside here in Saskatchewan, but today Nathan and I planted peppers and tomatoes in peat pots. I also want to start a small indoor herb garden (it is impossible to find fresh chives anywhere within a hundred miles of here!), so we also planted rosemary, parsley, and chives. I haven't had much luck with plants in the past so hopefully I can be more diligent with these.

Nathan helped me with the planting. He had a blast!

I have figured out what I want to plant in the garden (other than tomatoes and peppers) and have planned the layout. The plot I plan to use is 5 1/2' x 30' so I will put an aisle down the middle and have a 2' wide row on each side of it. There seems to be about 4" of good soil in the bed already but the soil under that is really hard so I will be building it up (How much?? Any ideas?? I was thinking if I had 12" - 15" it might be good)

The part of gardening I find most confusing is how to improve the soil before planting, so I am very open to suggestions. A local gardener here said to use equal parts of peat moss and (composted) manure ... and I think for the size of the garden I need just under 15 cubic feet of each. Does that sound right to anyone who's gardened in the past??

I'm sure there will be many more posts on this topic in the future. Here's a picture of our little greenhouse.

Pregnancy Summary - Week 12

2010-03-25T19:56:00.004-06:00

Yes, this is my bump at just 12 weeks ... compare with this one when I was 20 weeks pregnant with Nathan. Kind of scary!

I went to the doctor for my 12-week appointment on Tuesday. She said I'm actually measuring at 14 weeks and that it is probably because this is my third baby within a relatively short time period (she also mentioned the possibility of twins, but I'm determined not to worry about that until the ultrasound!). I have a history of measuring large after 24 weeks, but this is the first time it's been so early. It made me feel a bit better, though, since at least some of the bump is baby - it's not all fat.

(I actually managed to make it to my second weight loss goal that I mentioned after Hannah was born. I'm glad I did that before I got pregnant again - should make it easier to lose the weight after this one again!)

I've been on Diclectin for morning sickness the past few weeks. What a difference it has made! There were days before I went on it that I couldn't get off the couch. Once I started taking it I feel almost normal. There are a few things that still set me off, but nothing like what it was before. Now to figure out when it is safe to wean myself off of it!

Other than that things seem to be progressing well. I can't believe the first trimester is over. With my previous two pregnancies the first 3 months seemed to drag by and I was so worried about miscarriage. This one has passed in a flash and my stress levels have been much lower. I'm not sure if that's because this baby is a surprise or if it's because I have two other little ones to run around after so I don't have time to be stressed!

Hopefully sometime within the next 4 or 5 weeks I'll get to feel the baby move. Very exciting!

The blog with 9 lives ...

2010-03-24T22:30:00.005-06:00

So I disappeared for another 9 months, but who's counting? The six months that Peter was away were very rough on me. I was in a funk for pretty much the whole time and didn't feel much like chronicling those difficult days (maybe I should have anyway, but I just couldn't bring myself to do much except take care of the kids and get through my schoolwork).

Quick summary - I finished my coursework for my BEd (still have a 15 week practicum to complete in the future), Peter finished his training, we sold our house the day before he graduated, we moved to a small town in Saskatchewan just before Christmas, and we have baby #3 on the way ... due on October 7th, 2010. Yep, we are expecting again (totally not planned ... at all ... but very thankful regardless).

Hannah turns 1 on April 1st, so plans are in the works to celebrate that milestone. Nathan is in the midst of potty training. We are planning to renovate the basement of our house and plant a vegetable garden this spring. Lots of fun!

Since we are now so far away from our family I am going to try really hard to keep up with this blog. There will be lots of anecdotes and pictures of the kids to help the grandparents and other interested parties get their fix, as well as to chronicle this very busy time in our lives. Keep me honest ;) If I disappear again, feel free to (politely) ask me where I am!

One other note - since I am kind of a 'feast or famine' blogger, some of my posts may be written at one time and set to post later. When that happens I will try and remember to make a note of what date the event actually happened.

Testing ...

2010-03-24T21:25:00.002-06:00

I'm looking at reviving this blog (post to come in a couple of hours) but want to test a way to link this blog with my facebook profile ...

Getting settled in

2009-06-29T13:12:00.000-06:00

Peter headed away for 6 months on Saturday It was really tough to say good-bye - tougher than I thought. Nathan did much better than I thought he would and continues to do quite well. We know that he's doing what God wants for our family and we know that the end result will be worth all this in-between craziness, but it's still going to be a tough time for our family all around.

The kids and I have moved in with my parents for the time that he's away. Saturday and yesterday were crazy. Saturday after Peter flew out we went back home, packed what we needed, and cleaned until 6 p.m. I wanted to leave the house ready for a showing just in case. Then we headed to my parent's house and got here around 9:30 p.m. We did well that night to get everything out of the vehicles and the kids in their beds. Peter called that night to let me know he had arrived safely but we didn't chat for long.

Yesterday was another crazy day. I headed back to the city we'd been living in for church. In the afternoon I had a school meeting. There was also an open house at our place, so I went home between church and my meeting to turn on all the lights, etc ... I got back to my parent's house with the kids around 6 last night and they had a 'normal' bedtime routine, etc ... which was great. Before Nathan went to bed we did a video chat with Peter. Nathan was very excited to see Daddy and he told him 'I lub you' several times. It's so good that he's able to communicate so well now compared to even a few months ago.

I decided I would wait to unpack until this morning as I was pretty exhausted last night. I got up this morning and started. I've been working away steadily and everything pretty much has a place now. Both the kids are napping and I'm just taking a break for a few minutes. I'm trying not to think about how long 6 months is ... just focusing on one day at a time!

Stayin' Alive

2009-06-26T12:50:00.002-06:00

Yep, I'm still here. I realize posts have been scarce this week. Peter has been off and he leaves for six months tomorrow! He will be returning just in time for Christmas. I love Christmas any year but this one will be extra special!

Since I missed Hannah's 12 week post I'll just put a few highlights here. She has still been sleeping wonderfully! She sleeps easily between 10 and 12 hours per night. The earliest she has woken in the past week is 6:40 a.m. Talk about amazing. I am completely shocked with how well she's doing. I have been trying to keep her up for the 2 hours at supper time but she has trouble making it past 90 minutes.

I tried stopping the swaddle during this week and it seems now to be ok for night-time sleep but she really doesn't nap as well without it. I restarted swaddling her today and she seems to like it much better.

She fell out of love with her activity mat late last week so we were doing more playpen and bouncy seat time. I tried her on the mat this afternoon and she seemed much happier. I will be taking it with me when we move to my parent's house.

Other than that, this week has been spent preparing for Peter's departure. Tuesday night we went on a date. We went to see The Proposal and it was actually better than I expected! We laughed out loud many times throughout the movie.

I can't believe Hannah will be 3 months old next week!

Nathan - 25 months

2009-06-19T22:01:00.004-06:00

I would like to keep monthly updates of Nathan (and future kids) after they hit a point where each week there is not enough to update :) Since Nathan is obviously past that point (although his learning capacity at the moment is staggering!) we'll start with monthly updates now.

Skills Learned
Nathan learned how to open doors (with doorknobs that turn) this month. He's only done it once so far, though!
He has started to hold a crayon / marker more correctly this month. I have been helping him hold one and trace letters during our structured one-on-one time in the mornings.

Interesting Vocabulary / Speech Patterns
'Okay' (said slowly, emphatically, and with a pause between the 'O' and the 'kay') was a fun word that Nathan learned this month.
I also love when he says 'Hannah happy.' It makes me happy :) Just the inflection in his voice.
He learned the word 'splash' on our first day at the lake this month ... while throwing rocks into the water.
He also has learned how to say 'Yep, Mama' this month and knows what it means.

Training / Correction
We were working on Nathan doing what we instruct him to do this month. I really started working on this about 10 days ago. He's always been fairly obedient but, like a normal toddler, often ignores us when he wants to do something different than what we tell him to. I was tired of repeating myself a million times so decided to require a 'yes, mommy' from him when I tell him to do something.

He has mastered how to say the phrase 'yep, mama' and will say it about half the time when prompted. He was really good at saying it the first few days but then he started to understand what it meant. Now if he doesn't want to do something he'll resist saying it.

Eating
Nathan tried raw vegetables for the first time this month! For a long time I only gave him cooked vegetables because of choking hazards, and when I started trying to introduce raw ones he stuck his nose up at them. I've been consistent in offering them whenever we have them (which is very often in the summer!) and he finally ate some lettuce and peppers this week. We found out carrots are still too hard for his teeth, so I'll grate those next time.

Nathan also started eating both apples (without peeling / slicing them first) and corn on the cob this month! He *loves* corn on the cob and will eat 2 ears whenever we have it.

Potty Training
We haven't officially started training Nathan yet. This month I bought Potty Training 1-2-3 by Gary Ezzo and bought Nathan some training pants and regular underwear. Nathan used the potty twice. We plan to start really training (but still casually - we're not going to try the intensive 1 day plan) within the next month.

Miscellaneous
Nathan and Peter went to see Bob the Builder in a play / musical this month. He really enjoyed it and it was nice for he and Peter to get to experience that together. Here is a picture of his face while he watched.

And him hugging the kitty:

Piano

2009-06-18T19:14:00.002-06:00

Growing up I was given free piano lessons for about 8 years from the organist in our church. She was also my assigned mentor and this was one of the (many) things she did for me. I appreciate what she poured into my life over those years as well as her prayers since I was 6 years old.

Like most kids I wasn't all that keen on practicing daily. I did a program that had me go through books of songs (rather than learn a few songs really well in a year) so sight-reading was something at which I became quite proficient. I also learned to play by chord - very helpful when playing with a worship team. I was never very good at improvising from the chords, though. I blame that on my lack of imagination.

When I moved out for university and then got married the next year, we went without a piano for several years. Once we built our house we inherited a piano, but it was in pretty bad shape, so I didn't play it. With our upcoming move, Peter started selling off some stuff we were not going to use again, including the piano. At the end of it he had enough money to buy me a really nice electric piano!

It is a stage piano so it does not have any speakers in the piano itself. So far I've been playing it with headphones (we're saving up for some nice speakers). This actually works out well with the kids since I can play it and they don't have to hear it! I have been enjoying playing so much more than I did when I was younger. I look forward to sharing this with my children.

Oh, the piano is my Christmas gift from Peter and the kids. It's great to have it early!

Hannah - Week 11

2009-06-17T09:21:00.002-06:00

Eating and Sleeping
I think Hannah had maybe not a growth spurt, but a need for more food around the middle of the week in order to increase my supply. Over the weekend she ate every 2 hours or so starting at her 1 p.m. feeding until she finally slept well at either her 7 pm or 10 pm feeding. She was also very awake those days as well. Monday I worked to get her back on her schedule (and also felt more 'full' when she would go the full three hours) and the magic happened Monday night. Due to supper plans and a hair appointment that evening, I fed Hannah at 4:30 p.m. (slightly later for her 4:00 feeding) and she ended up staying awake (we were not home) until I fed her again at 6:30 p.m. (before I went to my appointment). Peter put her to bed around 7:30 p.m. and she slept until 5:30 Tuesday morning! I couldn't believe it!

Yesterday, due again to supper plans, I fed her at 6:45 p.m. (early for her 7 p.m. feeding), then again at 8:30 p.m. And, again, she was awake between those feedings. I bathed her after the feeding at 8:30 and then put her down for the night. I had to wake her at 7 this morning to start the day. Talk about amazing!!

I had noticed in this post that her daughter had two feedings just 2 hours apart around supper time starting at 4 months old and that she didn't sleep between the two. I had always wondered how you went to three naps and kept 5 feedings before I saw that. I had already tucked that away in my mind to start moving toward in a few weeks. I only realized this morning that that is effectively what had happened by accident over the past few days. I'm currently reworking her schedule to look something like this:

7:00 a.m. - eat, awake, nap
10:30 a.m. - eat, awake, nap
2:00 p.m. - eat, awake, nap
5:00 p.m. - eat, awake
7:00 p.m. - eat, bath, then bed

She will get the same number of feedings in a day, just spaced a bit differently. She's quite young to go 12 hours without eating so I'm going to see what happens tonight and probably play with the schedule a bit so she's not eating her last feeding until 8 or 8:30 if she seems to need it. That might introduce an extra feeding but I'm ok with that.

Waketime
This week her wake times ranged between 60 and 70 minutes except on the weekend when she spent complete cycles awake. I think we will stick with that except keep her awake for those 2 hours in the early evening. She seems to be much more alert this week - I can see that magical 3-month mark approaching. She's also been a bit more flexible. For example, if we have to transition in the middle of her nap from car seat to crib (she doesn't sleep well in the car seat if she's not in the car moving) she'll occasionally go back to sleep. Previously I would always put her in the swing if that happened. I'm excited for her to be awake over the supper hour. She's almost steady enough to sit in our high chair (it reclines). Until she is, the bouncy seat is where she'll be.

Swaddling
Still swaddling. She still sleeps best when she is swaddled.

Milestones
Hannah came very close to rolling over (back to belly) this week. Her legs fetched her up, which I'm grateful for since she was on the couch. Oops! No more leaving her on the couch to fetch the nursing pillow!

Things from last week
We did well increasing her waketime and I think it was a good idea. She seems much happier going to bed after having a bit more time to play. We also were much more consistent with wake-up time in the morning. A few mornings were 7:30 (if she woke between 5 and 6) but that's within my 7 - 7:30 window.

Things for this week
This is Peter's last full week home before he leaves, so we're going to be on-the-go quite a bit to visit people. My goal for this week is to relax and also to try and figure out how to keep the 10 hours of sleep at night! We'll also see how she does with a full 2 hours of being awake.

10 hours!

2009-06-16T18:47:00.002-06:00

So ... last night, as I mentioned in my previous post, we went to my brother's place for supper and then I headed to get my hair cut. I fed Hannah at 6:30 p.m. before we left my brother's house and Peter put her to bed when he got home around 7:30 p.m. She was still sleeping when I got home and I decided not to wake her before I went to bed, just to see what happened. She slept until 5:30 this morning!! I was so shocked. She usually wakes up around 6, so she almost slept until her usual wake-up time.

We had company for supper tonight so her schedule was a bit messed up. I fed her at 8:30 p.m. and then bathed her and put her to bed. I'm going to try not getting her up for her dreamfeed again and see what happens.

Busy, busy ...

2009-06-15T20:13:00.004-06:00

This past weekend was lots of fun. On Saturday Peter took Nathan to see a Bob the Builder show. Needless to say that was a hit! Nathan napped a bit earlier and his nap was cut a bit short to accommodate the show, but it was definitely worth it. It was great for them to have this special time before Peter leaves.

Sunday we had a farewell party with the worship team at our church. Most of our close friends from church were there and it was really nice to have one last get together before we leave. I'll still be around until Peter comes back but it won't be quite the same. Here are some pictures from Sunday afternoon - Nathan had a blast on the four wheeler.

Today started off on a bad note. Mondays are usually my grocery days, so I got up this morning, got myself and the kids ready, and drove Peter to work. From there I went directly to the grocery store, only to be told it was closed, today only, for renovations! So frustrating. I went to another store in the city but it's not the same when I'm not shopping at my 'regular' place. It was nice to get a real grocery order, though. The past few weeks I've been winging it for meals which I find very stressful.

We went to my brother's house for supper. Yum! It was really nice to get to have dinner with he and his girlfriend, and very nice to not have to cook this evening! Peter's coworker and her husband are coming for supper tomorrow night that will be nice. The weather is supposed to be beautiful tomorrow so we'll enjoy a barbeque.

I also got my hair cut tonight ... and I love it! I've kept it quite long over the past 6 or 7 months and now that Hannah's here and my face has lost it's puffy look I decided it was time to chop it off. That, in addition to some highlights, makes for a great pick-me-up.

Tummy time

2009-06-13T08:50:00.000-06:00

This is something that I struggled with with Nathan and swore I would be better at with subsequent children. I find myself, however, in the exact same spot with Hannah. I dislike doing tummy time with her for a few reasons.

First - she hates it! She screams most times I put her on her tummy. I've tried doing it right after she eats and later in her wake time as I worried a full tummy might be the problem. It doesn't seem to matter.

Second - we have a very hard floor (tile and laminate over concrete). I've tried putting those foam mats down and then a blanket or mat, but when she bounces her head up and down (crying, of course) it looks so painful!

Third - I never know where to position a blanket / pillow under her chest to help keep her head from banging off the floor. I've read you can do it and her activity mat even came with a little pillow to help with it, but she always looks so uncomfortable with it - either her head hangs past it or it just rests on it. She also tends to push forward with her legs when she's on her tummy so eventually the pillow ends up near her stomach.

So, all of those combined (especially the first two) cause me to put off doing tummy time. I know it's supposed to be important for them to develop head and neck muscles, etc ... but I just don't have the heart to do it that often! I try to do at least a couple of minutes every day but it doesn't always happen. I wonder if his lack of tummy time is why Nathan never crawled?

If I make any breakthroughs in this area I'll keep you posted and if anyone has any ideas they would be much appreciated!

Progress?

2009-06-12T08:38:00.004-06:00

I realized as I was running the other night that I'm up to running for a total of 15 minutes! Wow - how did that happen? It's still in 3-minutes spurts, but it's progress. I'm still at 3.5 mph for the walking portion and 6 mph for the running. I also leave the treadmill on an incline of 1 just because I remember reading once that it better simulates being outside. This week I walk for 2 minutes, run for 3, and repeat it 5 times.

I had been getting quite discouraged because, until a few days ago, I was still up a pound from what I had lost that first week. However, about 2 days ago I hit that weight again, and this morning I was down another pound - yay! I now have 9 / 14 / 19 pounds left to lose depending on which goal I'm looking at :) It's nice to be in single digits for my first goal!

Nathan finally started saying 'yep, mama,' which is close enough for me! I was playing with him this morning getting him to repeat what I said, and I slipped in 'yep' then 'mama' as the next word, and then we did the two words together. I really find sometimes he doesn't seem to know how to do two words in a row if he doesn't do them separately first. So far I'm not sure he understands the implications of saying it back to me after an instruction, but we'll keep working on that.

We have a house showing tonight, so this morning has been busy with cleaning. Thankfully the upstairs is all done and the downstairs just needs a bit of tidying up and a good sweep. It will be nice to have a really clean and tidy house for the weekend!

Ooo ... I keep forgetting to mention that this month now has 11 posts ... my previous maximum for any single month was 9! I've already passed the total number of posts for 2008 - very sad.

Overwhelmed ... plus some 'to dos'

2009-06-11T11:41:00.007-06:00

I ordered 4 new books the other day. This is unusual for me in that I hardly ever buy books. I tend to borrow from the library or friends instead (Peter calls me a book-moocher). Anyway, having used my Babywise book until it is showing signs of wear I figured ordering a few more from the series might be helpful. I ordered Babywise II (5 - 12 months), Toddlerwise (1 - 2 years), Childwise (3 - 7 years), and Potty Training 1-2-3. They arrived on Tuesday and I have skimmed through all of them. As a result I am on information overload!!

My first impression is that Nathan is kind of in 'no man's land' with the -wise series. The Toddlerwise book really focuses on 12 - 24 months, while most of the stuff in Childwise focuses on after the child can understand moral reasoning, which they say starts around their third birthday. I'm a little disappointed none of the books deal specifically with the age 2 - 3 (perhaps Preschoolwise would?) but there are enough things in Toddlerwise that I'd like to try and do that I'm sure we'll have lots to work on, in addition to preparing myself mentally for the work that will be required when I get to Childwise stuff.

The two things that stuck out that I'd like to work on right away are: 'yes, mommy' and hand folding. 'Yes, mommy' means that when I instruct Nathan to do something (eye contact is important here) that he will reply with that answer and then go and do what I've instructed. I'm trying really hard to use the word 'instructed' instead of 'asked' since I tend to end my instructions with '... okay?' Although Nathan's response lately has been and emphatic 'Okay' (a new word for him), I don't want him to ever think that what I'm telling him to do is optional. I'm working hard to instructing rather than asking. I started yesterday trying to get him to respond with 'yes, mommy' but I'm not having much luck at the moment. He will usually do what I tell him to but has not yet said 'yes, mommy.' He will often say 'please' since I think that's what he thinks he's supposed to say. We'll keep working on it ... any tips are welcome!

The second thing I want to work on is when Nathan is starting to lose control. The books say that at those moments I should tell him to fold his hands to get back some self-control. I was very skeptical of this ... it sounds a bit ridiculous! Having read some success stories and figuring there was nothing to lose I tried it at lunch today. Nathan had decided not to eat (natural consequences coming up when he gets up from his nap and is hungry I'm sure) but he was required to stay at the table while I finished. He started getting upset and repeating 'down, down ... ' over and over. I showed him how to fold his hands and told him to do that to get back his self-control. To my amazement, as soon as his hands were folded he calmed down and sat there smiling sweetly at me until I finished (in just a couple of minutes)! I really hope it wasn't a fluke!

Those are the two ideas that stuck out from Toddlerwise that I wanted to implement immediately. I'm sure there will be more when I re-read it more carefully. There is so much in the books that I want to make sure to do (the content is great while the editing is *terrible* - worst books I've ever read for grammar mistakes!!) that I definitely have to read them several times.

One more note on Nathan ... remember me mentioning in another post, just a short week ago, that Nathan hadn't figured out how to open doors yet? Well, I think I jinxed myself. He figured it out today. So far he did well and went right to sleep at nap time ... we'll see if additional training is needed in when it is appropriate for him to open his door and when it's not.

Hannah - Week 10

2009-06-10T06:16:00.002-06:00

Eating and Sleeping
Hannah has continued to follow the same eating schedule as last week (every 3 hours starting at 7 am). I must admit I'm lax about that start time - often it's 7:30 and one morning this week it was 8:30! I really need to work on that as it's so important to start at the same time every day.

The big news has been in sleeping - Hannah slept through until her wake time (7) 3 times this week! The other days she woke somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, so still much better than she was doing before. I'm not sure what to do when she wakes at those times, since I have to feed her, but then I usually put her back down and we start our day around 7.

Her napping this week hasn't been great. She is going down pretty well for most naps but has woken early usually once or twice a day. She doesn't seem hungry as she'll settle right down in the swing (but not sleep until right before she's due to eat again - of course!). I think she might be ready for longer wake times. She is a very happy baby when she's awake and loves looking around at everything. She'll also lay awake in her crib (I only know this from occasional times when she's sleeping somewhere other than home since at home her door squeaks too much to open it to check!)

Waketime
This week her wake times ranged between 45 and 60 minutes. I think next week I'll aim for 60 - 70 minutes. I tried to do that yesterday morning and she fell asleep in her bouncy seat right at the 60 minute mark! lol. Perhaps the morning wake times will be right at 60 minutes and afternoon / evening closer to 70. We continued to incorporate tummy time (which she hates) and she still loves her activity mat. I've also put her in her bouncy seat in front of the window most mornings - she loves to look outside. We've been able to start taking walks outside the past few days - the mosquitoes have calmed down a bit. I usually start the walk when she's due to nap since I assumed she would sleep. However, she seems to stay alert for the first half of the walk, so I may have to start the walk right after she eats.

Eyes
Hannah's eyes still have a bit of discharge but it does seem better than it was.

Swaddling
Still swaddling. The naps she sleeps the best for are the ones where she stays in her swaddle the whole time.

Milestones
Nothing big this week. She's laughing and cooing more and more every day, which I am loving!

Things for next week
I'd like to increase her wake time to about 60 - 70 minutes. I want to be more consistent with our wake-up time in the mornings.

This weekend was tough at the lake. It opened my eyes to what the summer will be like with lots of family around. The bedroom walls don't go to the ceiling so noise travels from room to room very easily. When Hannah would cry during a nap time someone would go pick her up and if she was quiet they would open the door to see what was going on (we did find out that she laid awake quietly for the last hour of her nap one time!). That often wakes her up so she didn't really get any good sleep while we were there. There is another room I could put her in that would be more removed from the action and I think I'll definitely have to do that in the future. My next challenge - finding a monitor that will work from the cottage to the shore. Anyone know any long distance (i.e. 300') monitors?? I would really like to be able to take Nathan down to the water while she sleeps.

Blessing Hannah

2009-06-08T10:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we had Hannah's blessing day at church. It is a tradition in our church, following the example of Simeon blessing Jesus and his family when he was a baby (Luke 2). We were so excited to have all our family here to witness this special time and Hannah did great (I was so worried she would cry!). She didn't even make a peep when I handed her over to the pastor while he prayed for her. Apparently she was smiling at the pastor as he talked before I passed her to him but I couldn't see from my perspective.

Both our kids' names come from their Biblical counterparts (Nathan was a prophet and an adviser / friend to King David - first mentioned in 2 Samuel 7). We named Hannah after the Biblical character in 1 Samuel 1 & 2. I want them to know why / how we chose their names - because we admired and want our children to emulate the character of these specific people from the Old Testament. I would love to find some way to incorporate their Biblical heritage into a wall hanging of some sort for their rooms but haven't figured out how to do that yet.

First day at the cottage

2009-06-06T18:25:00.006-06:00

We spent our first day at the cottage for the this year (first of many for me and the kids - I'm hoping to spend lots and lots of time there this summer) today and we couldn't have asked for better weather! It felt like a day in mid-summer. That made it very hard to leave at the end of the day, but we enjoyed the time we did get to spend there. The guys spent the morning getting things put back together after the high waters of winter and the afternoon playing with the sea-doo that Mom and Dad bought last year. Even Nathan got his turn.

There were quite a few boats out today considering the time of year. Every time one would go by Nathan would point and say 'boat.' Can't you almost see the 'b' sound on his lips in this picture?

He wasn't as fond of the waves the boats made, though.

When he wasn't pointing out boats in the water, Nathan was picking up rocks from the beach and throwing them into the water. Each time one landed he would say 'splash.' It was too cute. The bigger the rock the better he liked it!

We are back home now after a wonderful day with family. I'm a bit sunburned but thankfully the kids are good. Nathan was so wired from the day that he didn't even fall asleep on the way home. Hannah basically didn't sleep while we were there so she's due for a good sleep tonight.

On the way to the cottage Peter and I had a good discussion about what's important to us as parents regarding faith, education, and physical health (the idea to talk these things through came from here). I don't want to do 'accidental' or reactive parenting, so I'm really excited to have some steps to take to reach specific goals. Now for the implementation :)

This and that

2009-06-05T07:25:00.004-06:00

I don't really have a theme for this post, just a few random things I wanted to remember for the future.

Nathan is at such a fun age (really, they've all been fun except perhaps the first three months). He's getting to the point where he can 'help' me with cooking and cleaning things, which is great as it means he's not upset if I'm doing that stuff instead of playing with him. As you saw in a previous post he helped make chocolate chip cookies last week (we've been making a lot of chocolate chip cookies for house showings!) and this week he helped make pizza. I gave him the leftover pizza dough and he patted it out before his nap. We put it on a pan to let it finish rising while he napped. When he got up he spread the sauce on the crust and we put it in the oven for 7 minutes (I always start cooking my crusts before I load them up with toppings). Then while I put the toppings on the two big pizzas he was supposed to put them on his ... but he decided he would rather eat the toppings instead so I had to help him. It was so fun to watch him get excited about making his own supper! I'm excited to do this more often with him as he grows. I figure I'm doing his future wife a favour if I get him familiar with the kitchen now ;) Hmmm ... what's next ... laundry? lol.

Well, despite my excitement over losing 2 lbs and despite my continued efforts on the treadmill I have managed to gain back a pound this week. *sigh* I keep reminding myself that in the past it has taken a month to see any real results from a workout plan, but it's still discouraging. I started week 4 of the walk-to-jog plan yesterday, where I have to walk 3 minutes, then jog 3 minutes and repeat that 4 times. I've been walking at 3.5 mph and jogging at 6 mph (for my own records later). I find each workout very challenging but it's amazing that I haven't quit on any of them yet. Yay!

School is continuing on. Next week marks the halfway point of the course. I finished up one of my four assignments this week. Our major assignment is a group project that we've been working on fairly steadily. I'm really hoping things will start to come together on it over the next week. I don't want to be worrying too much about it after Peter leaves.

Hannah has been doing great sleeping overnight this week! She slept until her wake-up time two out of the last three nights and the other night she slept until 5:30, so still a fair amount of time from her 10 pm feed. Hopefully I don't jinx it by mentioning it here!

Dunkaroos for breakfast

2009-06-04T17:56:00.000-06:00

Why did Nathan have Dunkaroos for breakfast? (For the uninitiated, Dunkaroos are little snack containers with cookies in one compartment and icing in which to dip the cookies in a second compartment.) This is not normal breakfast fare at our house but this morning was special - Nathan used the potty for the first time ever!

We've been slowly easing into the idea of potty training since we know we have a big move coming up and it's not the best time to go at it hard core. We typically just get him to sit on the potty when we think of it and don't stress about it too much. He loves to sit on the potty when he's fully clothed ... not so much when his diaper is off.

This morning when I got him up I could tell he needed to pee (his diaper was almost dry) so I told him if he would sit on the potty I would read him his favourite book of all time, The Topsy Turvy Kingdom. It is a long book so I hoped while we were reading it he would just go, and he did! It was so funny because he looked down with a puzzled look just before he went.

This is uncharted territory for us. Should be interesting! I'm still not going to stress about it until we're settled at Mom and Dad's, but at least now he knows what he's supposed to do on the potty!

Current schedule

2009-06-04T04:00:00.007-06:00

I've spent some time over the last month or so trying to find a schedule that works for our family. During the first month of Hannah's life I found that I was too often neglecting Nathan during the day, so much that he would get bored eventually and start getting into stuff he knows he is not allowed to play with. He's such an 'easy' toddler and is great a amusing himself but he still has limits on how long I can let him play by himself. I began reading a blog that talked quite a bit about what categories of activities a toddler should have in his day and started to think about how to make it work for me.

The constant in our day is that Nathan naps somewhere between 12:30 and 3:30 for 2 hours. I also knew I needed Hannah to be on a 3-hour schedule and that I wanted some one-on-one time with each of them throughout the day. A new thing I added to Nathan's schedule is called 'independent play time.' This is a time for him to play on his own in his room. It will help him learn to play without me always interfering and fixing things for him when he gets stuck. The first day or two of this were tough, as Nathan would cry when I would shut the door and periodically pull at his door handle (as an aside - thank goodness he hasn't figured out how to open doors yet!). This only lasted for about 2 days, though, and now as long as he has his favourite toys (his cars and little garage) in his room he smiles as I leave. Yippee! He does independent play for 90 minutes most mornings.

Here is our current schedule, but it is always subject to change!

7:00 am --> Up and feed Hannah, Nathan up and dressed, breakfast for Nathan and I. Hannah goes down for her nap somewhere between 7:45 and 8:00 am.
9:30 am --> One-on-one time with Nathan.
10:00 am --> Independent play time for Nathan in his room. Get Hannah up to eat. Tummy time for her.
11:00 am --> Nap for Hannah.
11:30 am --> Independent play time ends for Nathan. We usually do some laundry right after this since we're already upstairs.
12:00 pm --> Lunch for Nathan and I.
1:00 pm --> Nathan goes down for his nap. Hannah up to eat.
1:30 pm --> One-on-one time with Hannah.
2:00 pm --> Hannah down for a nap. This is my own free time :)
3:00 pm --> Nathan up from his nap. If he's really tired I'll let him sleep a bit longer.
4:00 pm --> Hannah up to eat. Independent play time for her (usually either in pack and play or on activity mat). She goes down for her nap around 5:00 pm.
4:30 pm --> Supper preparation, supper, clean up.
6:30 pm --> Nathan bath and jammies.
7:00 pm --> Hannah up to eat, then bath.
8:00 pm --> Both kids in bed. Sigh of relief :) haha.
10:00 pm --> Dreamfeed (wake Hannah to eat, diaper change, and straight back to bed).

I had to make this schedule so I can do it by myself, since Peter is heading away in less than three weeks. Otherwise I would have put both baths at the same time and we would have done them together.

My original schedule had their naps / independent play time overlapping much more so that I had 3 1/2 hours where they were simultaneously occupied every day. However, I felt that I wasn't getting enough one-on-one time with either of them when I did that, so I like this schedule better.

I just ordered Babywise II, Toddlerwise, Childwise, and a potty training book by Gary Ezzo so when they come I'm planning to start adding in other elements to Nathan's day. I've read a few of them on the blog I mentioned above but wanted to get a basic schedule down first.

And ... starting to potty training with Nathan after we move. Fun, fun! At least I can do it in the summer where fewer clothes need to be removed. lol. I'm sure there will be many posts dedicated to this effort in the coming months. If anyone has any tips I would be grateful to hear them.

2 months old already?

2009-06-03T10:34:00.000-06:00

Wow - I can't believe Hannah is already two months old. I feel like time is moving much more quickly this time around. I remember 6 - 10 weeks being a tough time with Nathan as a baby, but they haven't even really been a blip on Hannah's radar so far.

Of course on the occasion of her two-month birthday she got to have her needles at the doctor. That also meant she was weighed and measured. She now weighs 11 lbs 4 1/2 oz and is 23 3/4" long! She's a growing girl! If I needed any confirmation that she's eating well a gain of almost 3 lbs and 3" in 2 months is definitely it.

Nathan did really well when Hannah got her needles. He was very worried about her when the doctor was checking her over. He kept trying to get out of his stroller and go over to her. When it came time for the needles I made sure he couldn't see her and he was fine with it.

I didn't get any pictures on her actual 2-month 'birthday' but I took some yesterday. She's definitely suffering from 'second child syndrome' as far as the number of pictures we take of her! It didn't help that Peter's camera batteries died shortly after she was born. He finally replaced them last week so hopefully that will lead to more photo ops in the next couple of weeks before he goes away.

Here are the top three of the pictures I took. As you can see she was in a good mood!

See how short this 'dress' is on her?? She's a tall girl!

Hannah - Week 9

2009-06-03T04:00:00.002-06:00

I've seen newborn summaries week by week on a few other blogs and thought it was a great idea! Things change so quickly when they're young that having this to look back on will be very useful :)

Hannah turned two months old this week - hard to believe! This was a good week overall for her. I remember with Nathan weeks 6 through 10 were his most difficult. For Hannah I would have to say her first month was much harder than her second.

Eating and Sleeping
I have followed Babywise with her pretty much since birth since it worked well for Nathan (and is what my Mom calls 'common sense'! lol). The basics are just that I've spent the last two months making sure Hannah's day has a sense of routine where she eats approximately every 2 1/2 - 3 hours, stays up for a few minutes to play, and then has a nap until her next feeding time.

This week I moved her to a full 3-hour routine. She eats at 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm, and 10 pm. She generally still wakes up once during the night, usually between 3 and 4 am. Since she's still young I'm ok with that feeding remaining in place for a few more weeks if she needs it. She did actually sleep through the night twice this week, but once her 10 pm feeding was pushed until midnight as I fell asleep on the couch. I'll have another post soon with details of my schedule with the two kids - it's trickier than I thought it would be trying to get their schedules meshed.

Hannah is a great eater, and very fast - she generally only takes about 15 minutes total to eat (probably 10 minutes on the first side, 5 on the second). With Nathan I made sure he spent a full 30 minutes eating every nursing period, but I learned from my sister who took a breastfeeding class that that's not necessary for every baby. It's made me much less stressed about feeding her. At her two-month appointment she had gained lots and is growing, so we're going to stick with what's working!

Waketime
Hannah could handle between 45 and 60 minutes of waketime total this week. 45 minutes was usually for the first 2 cycles and 60 minutes for the rest of the day. With our new schedule I've been making sure I get at least two one-on-one waketimes just with her to do tummy time and read, etc ... This is in addition to her daily bath. It's been fun to see her really start to enjoy her activity mat this week. She's also laughed a few times and started to coo - too much fun! This was the first week she really seemed to focus when I read her a book, too. Overall, a very interactive week for her.

Eyes
Hannah has been dealing with some eye discharge pretty much since birth. I tried antibiotic drops on the advice of the 24-hour hotline and just stopped them today, so we'll see what happens next. The doctor said if they didn't clear it up that it was just due to blocked tear ducts.

Swaddling
We still swaddle Hannah for pretty much every nap and at night. I've tried leaving her completely unswaddled for a few naps as well as leaving one arm out of the swaddle at other times. It's hit or miss whether she'll sleep well unswaddled for naps, but she can't even handle one arm out at night so we'll keep swaddling for now. She's so good about going to sleep on her own and staying asleep that I don't want to mess with it.

Milestones
As I mentioned above, Hannah started cooing and laughing this week. She's been smiling since about 6 weeks old and we enjoy every one of them. She can follow toys with her eyes when she's alert and she's starting to reach out to bat at her toys on her activity mat. It's so fun to watch her concentrate. This week we worked on getting more tummy time in and she started to stay there for about 7 minutes before she screamed. She's always been quite strong and can hold her head and upper torso fairly steady.

Things for next week
I'd like to keep track of things I want to try / work on with her. This week I'd really like to work on more tummy time and possible start working on rolling over tummy to back. I am enjoying the two one-on-one waketimes per day and want to continue that as much as possible. I also want to keep her eating times as consistent as possible so that hopefully she'll sleep longer stretches at night.

I think that's our week in a nutshell. Our routine has been messed up a few days because of house showings, but we don't complain about those. Still praying that the house sells before Peter has to leave at the end of the month! We had people through tonight that want some more details on the house, so I think that's a good sign.

Heart attack on the bbq

2009-06-01T10:56:00.003-06:00

On Saturday I mentioned that Peter wanted to try a new recipe for the bbq on Sunday. So we invited some friends over for supper and got to work after church. It needed to cook for up to 4 hours on the bbq at a really low heat, so we got to work getting it ready for 2:30. Here is a picture of it all ready to go on the bbq (note the beautiful basket weave with the bacon!).

Peter faithfully tended it all afternoon.

Oh, except for that time he left for an hour and left me in charge ;) I think I did ok, but when he came back it somehow caught on fire. Not to worry, though, it only burned the bbq sauce.

The video told us to cook it to an internal temperature of around 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, since we were cooking this on a grill instead of a bbq, and since our 'bomb' was slightly smaller than the one in the video, ours only took 2 hours too cook instead of 4! So, we called our friends who were coming for supper and asked them to come a bit earlier. We stuck the baked potatoes in the microwave to finish them off, and I quickly put together a broccoli salad and got out a bowl of baby carrots on the table. Oh, and made an apple crisp for dessert (but our friends brought a cheesecake instead ... yum!)

Since everything was so rushed I didn't get a picture of the 'bomb' when it was finished until after we ate. Here is what was left. I know it doesn't look very yummy but it was good. Honest.

Was it worth all the effort (and money)? I'm not completely convinced, but Peter only used 1 package of bacon so that cut down on the cost. It definitely looked cool and was a nice way to have a 'roast' of sorts without turning on the oven. I'll keep it in mind for the future when we want something slightly different.

Introducing Hannah Grace!

2009-05-31T10:47:00.001-06:00

This post is long overdue!

Hannah Grace was born on April 1st, 2009, at 11:15 p.m. And no, I couldn't 'hold off' so we wouldn't have an April Fool's baby ;) She weighed 8 lbs, 7 oz, and was 20 7/8" long (which is apparently long for a girl - the doctor said she'll be tall. I guess we'll have to wait and see).

I had a relatively 'easy' labour again. I had been contracting off and on since Saturday (this was Wednesday). At my appointment that Monday the doctor offered to 'stretch my cervix', which he did. At that point he said I was about 3 cm. This was already past the time I had delivered Nathan (he was born at 37 weeks and Hannah at almost 39 weeks) so I was anxious to have her (we knew she was a 'she'). He said that once he did the procedure I would most likely go into labour within 24 - 48 hours. I contracted pretty strongly Monday night ... nothing came of it. Tuesday I was bit crampy but nothing strong enough to worry about. Tuesday afternoon I decided to get on the treadmill and walk for as long as I could. It didn't end up being very long (2 miles with a break in between I think) but I felt better having tried something to get labour going on my own.

Wednesday I went to our church's Mom's group in the morning and complained that I was still pregnant - lol! I wasn't feeling much of anything at that point. Wednesday after lunch the contractions got a bit stronger, but nothing more than I had felt in the previous few days. By the time I left to get Peter at 3:30, though, I was starting to think something might be happening. By the time I picked him up it was getting difficult to drive through the contractions (I don't put much stock in timing them - from Saturday to Wednesday I had periods of time where my contractions would be 2 - 3 minutes apart lasting for about a minute, but they weren't painful). I told Peter what was going on and he suggested going right to the hospital. We had to drop Nathan at a neighbour's house anyway, so I said we should go home and see how I was feeling by then. I felt slightly better once I got out of the car so we decided to make supper. Big mistake! lol. Of course, I picked baked chicken and potatoes, which takes an hour. By halfway through their cooking time I was laying on the couch telling Peter I wasn't sure we could make it until supper was cooked. While it finished cooking I finished packing stuff for Nathan and our stuff for the hospital. As soon as the food came out of the oven we packed it up in two dishes (one for Nathan and one for Peter), took Nathan to our neighbour's house, and headed to the hospital.

We arrived about 6. We were planning on waiting to make sure I was staying before calling my parents to come up. I was pretty sure at that point this was the real deal, but the nurse said since the shift change was at 7 they wanted to wait until then to check me ... agh! I was in quite a bit of pain by this point. Throughout my whole labour, though, all the nurses said I was so calm, which is funny. Anyway, they finally checked me a few minutes after 7 and I was between 5 and 6 cm. At that point I got my fentanyl iv and tried to space the doses out every 15 minutes or longer. The nurses said I didn't have very much of the drugs at all and Hannah didn't need anything when she was born to counteract their effect so I think I took just the right amount of doses :) You're allowed to have a dose every 5 minutes, which I did for the last 30 minutes or so.

My water still hadn't broken and the contractions seemed to be less intense on the monitor once I got the drugs so the nurse was getting worried the drugs were slowing things down. The whole time I was there I still hadn't seen a doctor as she was out on supper break and then something else must have happened as she didn't come in until around 10:30. She was coming to break my water. Before she did I said I had to use the washroom and it's a good thing I did it then. She checked me after I was finished and I was at 9 cm! So, she broke my water at that point, which finished the dilation process, and it was time to push. I pushed for about 30 minutes instead of an hour with Nathan, which was great. I kept worrying because I had a fourth degree tear with him so I was trying to push slowly but my body wouldn't listen to me sometimes! She came out pretty easily, though, and I only had a second degree tear this time.

They brought her right to me this time and I got to hold her while they started to stitch me up. This whole period was such a blur when I had Nathan so it was nice to really feel 'present' for her. At the hospital it seems to be their policy to have the moms shower before going to their room on the ward, so I had a quick shower and we settled in our room for the night. Hannah slept most of the night but I had so much adrenaline in my system I couldn't really sleep.

It was nice that we had her late in the evening as we got to be together just the three of us until the next morning when visitors came :) Here's a picture I took of Peter once we got back to our room.

I also felt better during the recovery period as I had hoped I would. This was great, as with Nathan I was pretty much out of commission for a whole week!

Here's a picture of her today - almost two months old! I can't believe she's already grown so much!

Course #10 - Check

2009-05-30T09:32:00.002-06:00

Woohoo! I just finished a decent draft of my paper for my independent study project. This will count for my 10th course (out of 15) that I need for my education degree.

The paper is due on Monday, so I'm cutting it close, but I've found with Hannah and Nathan, plus putting our house on the market, this past month has been crazy! I've probably spent 30+ hours on it just in the past week and I'm so glad to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

I feel that way with the degree as well. Ever since my last year of my undergraduate degree I've wanted to be a teacher if I have to work in the future. Life happens and I didn't actually start my education degree until the fall of 2007, while I was on maternity leave with Nathan. At the time I planned to do 5 courses a year and finish my coursework in spring 2010. Hannah's timing couldn't have been worse for school, as she was due right at the end of winter session and the beginning of intersession so I didn't take any courses last semester and picked up a late-beginning intersession one. I also started this independent study just two weeks after she was born!

After I have finished the two courses I am currently doing I will have 4 courses left to take, all in the fall semester. I'm not looking forward to that as it will mean commuting two days a week and babysitting headaches, but I will be so glad to have the courses finished! Even though I hopefully won't have to teach full-time anywhere in the near future (with Peter's job change comes a huge answer to prayer - I will be able to stay home with our children! Yay!!) I know it is something I will / would enjoy in the future if it becomes necessary that I work. I still have a practicum to do at some point in the future, but we will wait for that until we get settled in our new location.

Peter took Nathan to a local center that allows kids to use their gymnastic equipment for a few hours on Saturday afternoon (for a fee, of course :) ). He really enjoyed it last time we went so hopefully they have a good time. It allowed me to have some uninterrupted time to get my paper finished. I will have to review it tomorrow and do a bit of formatting, but the main body of the paper looks pretty good. Have I mentioned I'm really glad to have it finished??

Peter wants to try a heart attack on the bbq (at least that's what I call it) for supper tomorrow night. To give you an idea (if you didn't click over to the video) the recipe calls for 3 lbs of ground pork and 2 lbs of bacon!! Craziness. Anyway, I'll report back on how it turns out on Monday. Other than that our weekend looks pretty free. I'm really hoping for some showings of the house to be scheduled next week - this past week has been way too quiet.

Off to feed Hannah! And I promise, a proper introduction post of her (with pictures!) is in the works. Sorry for the delay :) As you can see from the above this week has been quite busy!

Running

2009-05-29T09:36:00.003-06:00

Twice in the past I've found running to be the most effective thing for me to lose weight. Both times I also followed a 'walk-to-jog' plan to avoid doing too much too fast and getting injured. My favourite part of the link above is when it talks about 'slimmer hips' - that's what grabbed me the first time as my lower half has always been my trouble zone. I would also much rather exercise than restrict my diet too much.

Since it's worked before and since I tend to gain lots of weight when I'm pregnant (and breastfeeding doesn't seem to make it fall off me as I was assured it would!) I knew that once I had the ok from the doctor I would be starting all over again. As of last weekend I had 12 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-Nathan pregnancy weight, 17 to get back to my pre-Hannah pregnancy weight, and 22 to get to my 'ideal' weight. Fun, fun!

I stepped on the treadmill last Saturday for the first time and decided to start on week 2 of the program. Wow - that was tougher than I thought it would be! However, I stuck with it and this morning I started 'week 3.' I'm just going to run every second day and go through the weeks that way. All of my running will be done on the treadmill for the foreseeable future, as it's much easier to be able to go during the day while I'm home with the kids.

The best part of the week came this morning when I stepped on the scale and had already lost 2 pounds! So, that means I have 10/15/20 left to lose. Yay! I'm still in maternity pants almost exclusively but I have one pair of non-maternity dress pants I can start wearing now. Things are looking up :)

Making cookies

2009-05-28T12:24:00.005-06:00

So much has happened since my last update ... but I don't feel like recapping it all right now. I'll just mention a few of the major things then move on to what I wanted to write about today :) First, we had a little girl on April 1st (yes, I know, April Fool's baby, but I couldn't 'hold out' that extra hour as Peter requested when it was time to push. lol). Her name is Hannah Grace and I can't believe she's almost 2 months old already!

Second, Peter has accepted a new job that will require him to go away for training for 6 months (he leaves at the end of June). This means we will be selling our house (as we will be relocating at the end of that time) so I'm going to go home to live with my parents for those 6 months. As well, I have officially quit my job since we won't be here when my maternity leave is up, and I am working hard to finish my Bachelor of Education courses by the end of the fall. More details on all that stuff in future posts :)

This morning Nathan (he's 2 now!! eeks!) and I made chocolate chip cookies. It was my first time having him 'help' with cooking and it was so fun. Actually I did try one other time but it was a disaster - he fell off the chair he was standing on!

Here is my favourite picture from this morning. He has just noticed the chocolate chips in the dough he is supposed to be stirring and is on his way to pick one up and eat it. Too cute!

Of course, the best part of making cookies is ...

... eating them!

What a wonderful day!

2008-06-07T18:57:00.009-06:00

We had our first free Saturday in what seems like forever and we enjoyed every minute of it. It started with Nathan letting us sleep in until 7:15! His usual wake-up time is 6:00 or before, so this was very luxurious.

After lounging around until 9 (it was so weird not to have to be up and out on the weekend!) Peter went and borrowed our neighbour's lawn mower and mowed our lawn for the first time ever!!! He moved really quickly and got it finished in just over 90 minutes. Here's a picture of the finished product :) It's still rather patchy but we're hoping it fills in over the summer.

What a wonderful place for Nathan to toddle around ... after the mosquitoes leave of course. And ... after he starts walking. lol.

After Peter finished mowing the lawn, we took a drive in town for a walk (no walking outside around here - I'm not joking about the crazy mosquitoes - it's awful just getting to the car). We walked down by the river and Nathan had his first encounter with the grass this year. He seemed to enjoy our time outside and I got some great pictures. Here are two of them :)

I'm going to put the rest of the pictures on flickr for anyone who's interested.

This afternoon Peter and I worked on the house, which hasn't happened in way too long. Peter caulked the rest of the windows in the living room (yay!) while I painted the two doors in the back hallway, caulked the trim in the back entryway, and painted the baseboards.

Here's a look at the hallway and the closet door (the closet is to the left of the first picture). The door straight ahead is our most-used entrance (back of the house) and the door in the right of the picture is to a half-bath.

And ... that was our day. It feels like we had time to do so much stuff with just one free day. I wonder what we'll do with a bunch more of these this summer! lol.

Quick update

2008-06-04T10:08:00.002-06:00

Just a quick post so no one thinks I've gone MIA!

The past week was really busy with all our youth events finishing up (except a pool party once it's a bit warmer) until fall. Everything went really well and Peter and I are now looking forward to a relaxing and refreshing summer before everything starts up again in the fall. I feel we really need the few months 'off' to allow us to re-fuel for the new year.

Amazingly, other than a stitchy night at Eleni's on Monday night I don't have any other evening commitments this week. I'm still working Tuesdays / Thursdays, and am really enjoying that schedule. Nathan has a doctor's appointment next Thursday, so that will mess things up a bit, but I'll just have to make up a few hours.

We're in the middle of mosquito season in our neck of the woods. I have honestly never seen them as thick as what they are in our area. It is absolutely disgusting. The last three nights I have been dragged out of sleep with that obnoxious 'bzzzzzzzzzzzzz' sound. My new solution - go finish the night in the guest room. Since it's usually only an hour before the alarm goes off they can't find me that quickly ;) I can't wait for them to go away so I can enjoy the outdoors again!

I took a video last night that I'd like to post, but I have to get it off the video camera ... I'll come back later with that if I get it figured out.

Home alone

2008-05-23T18:01:00.003-06:00

Ahhhh ... the beauty of an evening home alone. Well, Nathan's here, but he's sleeping peacefully in his crib. Peter is out chasing down some information he needs for a possible future project (more details will follow if anything comes of it ...).

I'm sure everyone is dying to know what our plans for the weekend are. Errr .. maybe not. Oh well, I'm going to tell you anyway :)

Tomorrow is 20x the points day at Shoppers, so if I spend my $50 I'll be eligible to get $150 in free stuff the next time I go in. Yay! I always need stuff like diapers and razors, so I'm sure $50 won't be difficult to reach.

Tomorrow afternoon we're celebrating my Mom's, my brother's and my birthdays in SJ. Our birthdays all fall within two weeks of each other, and with all the other celebrations in May we've decided to group them the past few years. It makes for fewer trips up and down the highway. With the price of gas, that is a very good thing!

Sunday is a super-busy day at our house. We have church as we usually do in the morning. Then our small group Bible study is having a double session on Sunday afternoon / evening with a potluck barbecue in the middle. We'll have about 14 people here for supper that evening as well as facilitating the Bible study sessions. Should be fun!

That's our weekend in a nutshell. I really missed having my Friday off today and the state of my house is definitely worse for the wear! I did manage to finish cleaning up from Nathan's birthday party (although there are still balloons all over the house) tonight.

Hope everyone has a wonderful relaxing weekend!

SYTYCD!!

2008-05-22T18:39:00.005-06:00

My absolute favourite show of the summer returns tonight - So You Think You Can Dance. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, but I think it's because I'm completely clueless when it comes to dance. I rely on my friend Sue to tell me who's the best dancer ;)

So ... in the midst of a crazy busy week I'm sitting here enjoying my guilty pleasure of SYTYCD. It's not a good stitching show, though, because watching the screen is kind of important. It is really helping me to unwind!

I've been back on the flylady wagon (I know, there's no wagon!) for about a month or so. It's been going well - Fridays are generally my cleaning day. I spend an hour in the morning doing my weekly home blessing. It consists of: change beds, clean bathrooms, vacuum furniture, dust, and sweep. I spend an hour in the afternoon in the current zone doing whatever I think needs to be done. So far, so good!

Short post tonight, but I'm keeping my streak alive! I'll add on a couple of recent pictures of Nathan for good measure.

He loves his truck :)

Concentration

Playing catch-up

2008-05-21T13:59:00.003-06:00

As was evident from my last post, I'm back to work. Thankfully finances allow us to have me work only a couple of days a week, which is just fine with me. I don't mind my job, but I really would rather be home with Nathan.

I have chosen Tuesdays and Thursdays as my regular work days. As a friend mentioned, by choosing those days I can always say (when I'm at work), "At least I'll be home tomorrow!" lol My boss has been very flexible with letting me change my schedule when required, which is amazingly wonderful.

Hmmm ... what else is new?? I'm still stitching away and recently finished Celtic Christmas. I don't have a picture of mine, but it looks similar to the one on Eleni's blog. I also finally framed and hung my Guardian Angels picture for Nathan's room. Peter made the frame, I finished it, cut the mat, and put it all together.

I just ordered some soap from my friend Sherrie. She's making a trip to NB to deliver some on the weekend. I can't wait to try it out!! Her descriptions sound so scrumptious I'm afraid I might eat it instead of use it to wash with. I'm going to use most of the bars I ordered as gifts, but I think I'll keep one for myself :)

It's my party ...

2008-05-20T19:22:00.006-06:00

After a long break, I'm going to try my hand at this blogging thing one last time.

I can't believe Nathan is one year old today. It seems like only yesterday we were rushing to the hospital because my water had broken and yet so much has happened since then. It's hard to imagine what life was like without him as a part of our family.

We had a great birthday with Nathan. I switched my work day so I would be off, and Peter took a vacation day. Around noon we took Nathan for his first hair cut. He was really curious about the whole thing, but wasn't nervous or upset at all. I didn't realize how long parts of his hair were until the barber got clipping!

Tonight we had the whole family in for supper. Nathan really enjoyed his birthday cake!

In other news, I've recently started doing some digital scrapbooking. Paper scrapbooking was something I had done because I wanted to preserve the memories captured in photos. However, I hated the process. I did not enjoy my time spent scrapbooking. I had thought of digital scrapbooking before but I didn't realize you could have the pages printed. Once I realized it was possible to get them printed and even printed in bound books, I was hooked. Here's a sample of a page I've done recently.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm working Thursday and Friday this week, which kind of messes up my regular schedule of Tuesday / Thursday, but that's what long weekends are for!

It's been how long????

2007-12-11T11:56:00.000-06:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost 3 months since my last post. No point in trying to catch up on everything that's happened since then - I'll just jump in where we are now.

Nathan is of course growing like a weed! He is a completely unmotivated baby when it comes to rolling over - he's only done it once or twice. I asked the doctor about it and he said not to worry. He can sit for a few seconds at a time on his own. We are definitely getting excited about his first Christmas and the million photos that will surely be taken ;)

Speaking of pictures, I uploaded some new ones on flickr, finally.

My Christmas preparations are coming along well. I'm so much less stressed this year because I'm home. I wish I could stay home forever!

Well, time to go ... Nathan's waking up!