Mystery Package

Today we got a mystery package.  It arrived as a cereal box, via Canada Post, filled with new baby clothes!  They're beautiful and will fit Adara perfectly.  We have no idea who they are from as they came with no card and an address that we don't recognize.  If this is you, Baby Clothes Fairy, thank you!  Keep 'em comin'!

New pics for Grammy

And a pic for Auntie Kristen

Pics from Len's bday

Here's a break from the whining and baby photos, pics of Lens' bday party!

And Len too

And now Len is sick as well.  Fanfreakintastic!  At least Lyndee called today to chat.  We talked in between me feeding the baby and turning her on her side as she dry heaved and threatened to puke.  Strange, what can become perfectly normal in your life... We're still getting by and I have to say that we got relatively mild versions, no real high fevers for anyone although lots of aches and pains and upset tummies.  

Adara is crying at me a lot today.  It's very different then her usual cry, it's very specifically a request directed at me to do something about how she's feeling.   Heartbreaking and it was really getting to me this morning.  So, I decided to think about it like when Len is sick or I am.  If I'm sick (like now, say), I'll occasionally moan from the couch " My tummy hurts" or "I ache all over".  And Len says "I know babe, do you want anything?"  It means nothing, he knows that he can't do anything about how I'm feeling and I know it too.  So now every time Adara cries "at me" I'm supplanting it with "mommy my tummy really hurts" and I'm responding with "I know babe, i'm sorry it hurts but it'll be over soon".  It makes me feel a lot better about the occasional frantic accusatory cries. And to her credit, she's being very good, only doing these cries about every hour and a half when she gets too tired to deal with the world again. 

I must admit though that I'm feeling particularly down about all of this.  There was a show that I wanted to go to tonight and I had several invites to come and watch the oscars.  It's sunday, which is a night that Len is home so sometimes is my night out; but due to circumstances hasn't been my night out alone in four weeks.  (the detail oriented of my readers can note that I was out last sunday for Len's bday and that two sundays before that I was in sunny florida, but this is about my night out alone people, ALONE!) So, add to that the wonderful Lyndee calling with lots of lovely career and personal life things going on that make me crazy jealous for those days.  Ok, yes Lyndee has her own problems (like this being her first day off in fourteen) and my life will include career again soon... but this is my whine people, so suck it up and don't get all logical on me!

On an up note, it's sunny out and the babe is giggling all of the time now. :)

We're Sick....

The baby and I have the flu... daddy had to say home from work to take care of us. The flu sucks. I finally understand what projectile vomiting is. In other news, she's twice slept through the night from 7pm to 6:30 am and finally giggled today for Len. Clearly she's not that sick.

Julia and Rafa visit

Here's some pics from when Julia and Rafa came to visit about two weeks ago.  Adara was in a bit of a pissy mood, but she still deigned to be held by them and adored!  Check out the second hand sleeper on her that I got for 2 bucks!

Blitz Bliss and other stuff

Today was a lovely day! I got up, ate breakfast got ready and headed out the door to baby salsa class. We took the subway for the first time together, and that went just fine. Although, did you know that not every subway station is wheelchair/stroller accesible? I did not and am frankly a little shocked. I talked to another mom on the subway about it and she suggested that I check before heading anywhere with the stroller. She also gave me her "mom card" which was super cool with her and her baby's info. Neat, huh?
Anyhoooo... Then I went to Body Blitz spa with Gretel. Glorious!!!! It's a water therapy spa where you move between a big warm salt water pool, a hot green tea hot tub pool, a cold therapy pool, sauna and steam room. It has great big red leather loungers to lay on and the pool room is all cedar and natural stone with waterfalls and low lighting. It was so great, I want to go again and again!
Got home at 4:30pm and since then have managed to catch up with Len, make and eat dinner, put the baby to bed, make tomorrow's lunches, put together tomorrows crockpot dinner, do the dishes, put away clothes and catch up with blogs. I am a super homemaking, spa indulging Queen!
On a different note, cause Jenn mentioned it in her blog: what the bleep was with Stuart Maclean this week?????? For those of you who don't know, he's the host of the Vinyl Cafe on CBC. This week he decided to do an entire hour long show of sad songs. What the bleep was he thinking doing an hour of sad songs in the middle of bloody February????? Perhaps my parents who are in Florida were able to put up with it more, but for those of us alone in our houses, with crying babies in February in the midst of piles of snow, this was not good! Silly Stuart, sad songs are for the emotionally stable/non hormonal...
Len's bday on Sunday was great! We were out until midnight and had about 40 folks come out for some pool, drinks and food. I ordered a platter of Indian nibblies for a little group, and then Gretel and I ate it all mostly solo.... feeding babies is hungry work, dammit! Lots of Len's work friends came and it was great to finally get to know them a little better too. So, thanks to everyone who made the night so much fun and a welcome break from baby land.

Camera Working, kind of

Alright, so I found these photos in a very obscure file folder, buried in the depths, with the title 2000 on them... Nevertheless, i managed to get some new photos uploaded.

In the first one Adara is wearing her new hat, lent to us by Zoe and Alex.  We love it.  Pics two and three are cute outfits to go out for play groups and social outings in.  Enjoy! Who knows how long it will be until I figure out the camera and computer for real! 

Is there something on my head? This really worries me...

What the heck????

So, I'd figured that I had my baby figured out for the last three weeks or so.  Sleep for 20 minutes, up for 1 hour and 45 all day, down for the night between 5pm and 7pm, up twice in the night.  Then, the last two days, she only got up once in the night, the second time wasn't until 6 am, which really isn't night.  Today, her first sleep of the day was 2 and a half hours and then she was up for 3 hours.  Now she's been sleeping again for 45 minutes and I have no idea when she'll wake up.  Adara!  Tonight is daddy's birthday party; it is not the time to change things up!  I'll be out tonight from 5pm on and the lovely Nanny Annie will be here.  I have no idea what to tell her to expect,since this is all new to me....

In other news, we finally sucked it up and bought the jogging stroller that everyone told us that we'd need with the amount of walking that we do here in Toronto winters.  This winter has been particularly snow heavy, and after 10 days of not being able to go out with her, Len and I had both had it.  So we went and bought a big three wheel, suv jogging stroller for using around the neighbourhood. We'll often walk an hour with her around here and want to be able to jog and blade in the spring so it makes sense.  So, we get it (fully assembled) and take it out for a ride about an hour later.  It lists to the left uncontrollably.  Not even functional right now... Not a big deal as it's on warranty.  Except that I'm like a three year old sometimes.  I bought it now, because I want it to work now dammit!  Why is it that lately all of the things that I do to make my life easier make it more complex?  

Joy

For no particular reason, other then that's it february and I watched a sad movie today, I'm down today. The movie (P.S. I Love you, very good really) had a lot of highlights from the life of this couple and I started thinking that my life had very few highlights recently. So, I challenged myself to right down 20 really good nights or days or events that I remember down. In 10 minutes, I had written 60, felt better and stopped.
So, here's a couple of the ones that I wrote, since many involve all of you:
1) the night in Blyth where we laid out in the back of Andrew's pickup truck watching the amazing northern lights and writing dirty names to musicals
2) the night of my engagement dinner at my parents house: badminton in the backyard, pics on the beach with Jenn, a beautiful drunken dinner, late night visitors and fog coming in off the fields. perfect...
3) A drunken night out with Lyndee, Mrs. H. and the Ya-yas. I don't know where we went or how we go there, but I ended up asleep on my dining room floor in knee high boots and mardi gras beads and remembering a great night of conversations with great women
4) sleeping under my first Christmas tree in the old apartment
5) Len's 39th birthday at McVeigh's . The one where I got up and sang happy bday in front of the whole bar and Bubba chased people with a sausage
6) The closing night party of the Banff PACT conference. A great big teepee, a huge bonfire, lots of drunken dancing, a tug of war, and taking the last bus home trying to stay awake to rehash it all with Lyndee before sleep
7) A day on the beach with Liam, Jenn and Griffin this summer at Wasaga. Just enjoying being with Liam.
8) a night in Nantes, France at a Creperie with all of Kristen's french and Canadian friends
9) dancing in the shop at the Tarragon with Lisa and Andy and the cast
10) building sandcastles in PEI with my dad
11) the Christmas eve at my parents house where we were all jumping around and dancing to Celtic tunes
12) breakfast in bed, classical tunes on the radio, my gorgeous husband by my side and the baby asleep... about 8 weeks ago
13) Adara's first giggles
14) the 2006 Dora Awards party after Cahoots won four doras after a very challenging year for me

So, that's it from me. Sorry,no pics today, we're still having download issues with the new camera and the mac. I'm sure that we'll figure it out soon.
I challenge you all to tell me your joy moments or just think about them this week.

Spit Up and Smile

Well, we made it through the four month shots better then the two month ones.  We had them yesterday so that Len would be home all day monday and tuesday until 5pm with me.  It went a lot better though.  She was fine yesterday, although fussy and running a fever today.  She's asleep right now, so we'll see how long that lasts.  

They also weighed and measured her at the doctors.  She's 25 inches long (born 21 inches) and 14 pounds 8 oz (born 6 pounds 13 oz).  That puts her in the 75 % percentile (now you know mom)  for both, so she's healthy and well proportioned and gaining like a champ.  I feel personally quite smug and content with this, although I've done nothing but offer a breast when requested...

I also weighed myself and was astonished to find that I weigh 10 pounds less then I did before I got pregnant.  This has got me thinking that if I could find the time to get in some sit ups and leg lifts, I could have abs again!  Actually never mind abs again, I could have abs!  I've never had visible abs.

In other news, it's bloody snowing again!  I'm getting pretty frustrated with this!  I can't get the stroller through the snow, so I can't take her out in that.  I can't take her out in the sling or front pack, because I can't step over the mountains of snow on the corners without falling over.  I can just barely take her out in the car, because it still involves stepping over a mountain of snow carrying her, and then carrying her to our destination point over mountains of snow.  We went to baby salsa class today, because I honestly couldn't take being in the house anymore!  After a week of sun and freedom in Florida, this is particularly galling.   I went out to try out a used Zooper stroller that was a lot bigger at Once Upon a Child. It has bigger wheels which should be better in the snow.  I took it out for a test drive with Adara, and even with huge wheels, it still had trouble with this snow.  It also folds to such a large size that it would take up the entire trunk of the car.  We may have to revisit this stroller debate in the spring when we give mom back her car and so will be strollering a lot more. Then, I won't care if it folds up into the car or not. 

Len and I had to attend a funeral visitation on sunday afternoon with Adara.  She was very good and we took her along specifically to give people something to do other then feel sad.  After the visitation, Len pointed out to me the number of times that I said "puke" as in "Oops, baby, you've had a big puke there!" or " Look out Len, she's puking on you!".  He suggested that in my past life as a non mom I never would have said this word; I would have settled on "spit up" or "was sick to my stomach".  He also suggested that "puke" is rude.  I think that he's right.  I felt kinda sad thinking about how talking to myself and Adara all of the time has really lowered my conversation level, never mind my sense of what's polite.  And lets not even discuss what it's done to my table manners or my sense of what's "fashionable".  Essentially, it looks good on me if it zips or buttons up the front now!  Oh well, it's a short and weird period in my life and I will recover.  In the meanwhile, I  shall just wipe the "spit up" off my shoulder and keep on smiling!

Frustrations and moral quandaries

I'm a little bit frustrated with the impossible level of skill expected of parents these days.  This week, as many of you probably know, there has been studies released indicating that BPA based plastics leach unacceptable amounts of carcinogens from baby bottles into milk.  Worse yet, the more often the bottles are heated, the higher the level of carcinogens. As everyone knows, baby bottles have to be washed in super hot water and occasionally sterilized by boiling.  Our bottles, avent, were cited as one of the worst.  Health Canada hasn't weighed in yet, they're doing their own research.  

Meanwhile, I was left with a dilemma.  Our bottle system really works for us.  It's easy.  I use the avent pump, allowing me to pump directly into the bottles and then just put them in the fridge for later use.  Easy, less cleaning, no in between steps.  However, that means that the milk sits in the bottles for one to five days, greatly increasing the risk of leaching.

So, I went out (after much debate) and bought the Born Free bottles that don't leach carcinogens.  Honestly, I'm not sure whether to trust the studies or not.  I'm trying to be a mom, nurse, housekeeper, book keeper, chef and now, expert reader of scientific studies.  In the end I couldn't decide if the results of the studies where conclusive enough for me to be worried or not. However, I don't want to be wondering 20 years down the line if I caused her to get cancer because I refused to spend $60 on new bottles.  So, I bought them.

However, now the bottles don't fit on the avent pump.  I can't use the old bottles that did fit because they leach carcinogens. I tried my three other pumps, none of them fit the born free bottles.  One of the pumps (the medela) that I have has it's own small storage containers that are BPA free and therefore safe.  I tried using that pump; it hurts, I can't do it.  

I find myself feeling utterly overwhelmed by this.  It just points out to me all of the dangers lurking in the world for her.  It also just frustrates me that I get one aspect of this parenting thing worked out and another part of it stops working.  Ie: gain sling skills, lose my pumping system.  Sometimes it just feels like I'll never get it all together. 

Add to this, the moral quandary now.  I have all of these avent bottles and nipples left.  Do I give them to goodwill or throw them away?  I don't wish to expose someone else's baby to potential carcinogens.  However, having worked in a shelter for two years, I know that there are many moms out there who can't afford bottles at all, carcinogenic or not.  If I donate them to goodwill, they'll be able to feed their babies.  They can't afford the Born Free bottles at $13 a pop.  But, if it's not good enough for my baby, it's not good enough for theirs either.  Thoughts?

Watch out mom, this thing's loaded!

 A WARNING TO THE FAINT OF HEART: THIS BLOG IS ABOUT BABY BODILY FUNCTIONS!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

So, Len and I were trying to get out the door to a funeral visitation yesterday at 3pm.  We were madly trying to get ourselves and the baby dressed and get there before her bad time of day (traditionally 4pm to 6pm).  Suddenly, my darling baby girl, shot a great stream of poop across the change table, right off the end and down the wall.  This was a distance of about a foot and a half!!! It didn't even touch the change table until about 9 inches along!!!  Len came immediately at my shout and wiped off the wall and change table.  But, disturbingly, her bodily fluids have actually changed the colour of the paint on the wall.  Odd...

Mind Games

Len (my husband) and I have started a fun new game because I was complaining bitterly about my "mommy brain". Now, on thursdays he brings home the Epoch Times. It's a ten page little newspaper that summarizes some world and local events with a pretty liberal approach. It's my job over the course of the next week to read the paper when I have time and guess which article he wanted to discuss because he thought it would interest both of us. It's a fun little exercise in how well we know eachother, gives us something to talk about and gives me a goal (no matter how small) for the week. I quite like it! This weeks discussion was about Kivek (I think that's the name, or Kiva... mommy brain) an online organization that organizes small loans from first world people to third world people to start up businesses or agricultural ventures.

The baby developed a new skill today. She can now suck on her left foot big toe just as well as her right hand thumb; and with just as much contentment. Ah,how they grow...

Tonight I'm off to see Bombay Black at the Living Arts Centre while loyal babysitter Cynthia minds the wee one. Our friends Julia and Rafa are also coming for their first visit with us since the babe. They are talking about having kids and I'm really a little afraid that seeing our lives will talk Rafa out of it... oh well!
That's it from me for today.
PS: those of you who were hoping for a pic or video, can blame Len. He keeps taking the mac to work and it's got all of our multimedia on it.

Living it up in the sun and goin' low tech

Here's some new pics on our new camera from Florida.  A new camera you ask, why? Well loyal reader, a new camera because I'm getting dumber every day! :) Actually, I've just replace past knowledge with new mom knowledge.  For instance, I used to know how to operate our expensive high tech, many options camera.  When I had Adara, I forgot how to operate it and haven't remembered since.  Every single picture that I've taken of her since birth, has been blurry when I printed.  So, after trying for an hour one night to take one clear picture of her while she slept, I announced to Len that we were going "low tech".  I went to Florida, bought a brilliant point and shoot camera, and set that frustration behind me!  So, if you know of anyone looking for a one year old fancy camera, tell them to call me, cause I'm not picking it up again until Adara goes to university!

So, the Florida trip.  We managed to make it through all of the madness of airports and fllights. On both flights Adara was an angel, sleeping for the majority of them. However, fighting my way through customs with stroller, carseat, backpack, carry on and baby was a challenge!  Did you know that you have to take your shoes off now?!  On the way back I actually had the baby in the sling, had to take the carseat off of the stroller, fold up the stroller, put both on the conveyor belt to scan, take the baby out of the sling, take off my shoes, socks and belt, and no, they couldn't hold the baby or help fold up the stroller.  You try it, it's not easy!  Fortunately, lots of other travellers helped.  It actually got to the point on the way home that young business men were coming through customs and one by one, stopping to help me put on a sock, tie a shoe, put on my belt etc, and carrying on their way so the next person could help and we didn't get backed up in line!!! Insane, and somewhat embarrasing....

Anyhoooo... Florida was good, quite sunny  and lovely to walk on the beach.  I went shopping, went out for a couple of lunches, sat in the sun a bit and hung out with my lovely parents.   Adara had a bit of a freak out and decided that no one but mommy could put her to sleep.  So, lots of carrying and jiggling and swaying for me; but at least there were people making me food and tea and doing the laundry and everything!  

We went out for crabcakes one afternoon and out for lovely sandwiches another.  The shopping made me laugh!  I used to wander with Lyndee or Jenn and look and try things on and debate and make careful purchases. This time, I told mom exactly what I wanted, we all three went into the store, dad took the baby , mom whipped things off the racks into the cart and I stood in the change room and tried them on.  I came out, mom told me exactly what she thought with no sugar coating or hesitation and we put it in the "buy it" or "forget it" pile.  30 minutes later I owned two pairs of pant, a pair of capris, a sweatshirt, a belt and a baby sleeper.  The only thing that we didn't find for me was tshirts and jean capris, so, another day.  

Well, that's all that I can write tonight so more stories and pics as I have time and figure out the new camera.  

Teaser... coming up is a lovely video of Adara giggling for the first time.  However this requires me figuring out the camera and how to upload videos to the blog.  So, don't hold your breath, 'cause I wouldn't want you to hurt yourselves!