catch up

so i haven't been blogging. :P big surprise unfortunately (not). between working part-time, being pregnant with my 2nd child, caring for a toddler and running a home (oh yeah, and my marriage too *sigh*) i did not have any motivation to blog.

so what's happened since the last post? lots. had a good summer with August off where hubby and i got to do lots of projects around the house. and deal with a stupid neighbour. but i digress. then i went back to work for 6 weeks (until i was 33 wks pg) and spent the time counting down! LOL

then my pregnancy took a turn. i started putting on a bunch of weight, due to excess fluid in my uterus. i had to go for weekly ultrasounds, weekly midwife appts, and then weekly OB appts to monitor my status. *sigh* however, it is very good i took off work at 33 weeks. at 35 weeks my lil' stinker decided to turn BREECH! uugh. the babe had been head down for months, but with all my excess fluid, it's apparantly very easy for baby to flip around. so i then spent the rest of that week doing exercises from here. lying upside down, doing hand stands in a pool, inversions, etc. thankfully, prayer and inversions worked and baby turned back head down by the next ultrasound.

now, i had been having conversations with this babe about when it was allowed to come. my older daughter came at 36 wks 4 days, so was a "preemie". i told this babe it could come anytime after 37 weeks, 0 days. well, it did what it was told! my water broke at 37w0d. :O right after an afternoon getting maternity shots done by my Dad (LOL. i know. talk about cutting it close!)

the main story about this child and this birth is that she was born on Nov. 4th at 4:14pm via c-section. she was 7lbs 10oz and 20.5" long. her name is Rebecca and she is a cutie! we are in love with her and getting used to being parents of TWO!! kids. whew! it's busy.

anyways, there's the catch up! :) later gaters.

The 2nd time around...

An accomplishment is:
- completing a shopping trip with your toddler in tow...without either of you losing it.
- washing, drying, and bringing all the laundry upstairs again. In less than 2 days.
- sleeping thru the night without having to pee.
- cooking with a toddler
- still being able to put on undies and pants standing up- to clean. Anything. Period.

Firsts...

yes, she's 2 1/2 y/o and firsts aren't as new and fresh as when she was less than a year old, but last week we had a BIG first. my daughter has been weaned now for ~ 2 solid weeks and so i really felt comfortable leaving her for her FIRST OVERNIGHT away from Mommy & Daddy! she went to her daycare for the daytime, and stayed overnight there (home daycare) and we picked her up the next day! and what was the other first you ask? well, Mommy & Daddy had their first overnight without daughter and went to a U2 concert together! :D the concert was great and it was fun to just be husband and wife, not mommy & daddy.
daycare kept us up to date with texts and picture msgs about the evening/night and we responded in kind with pics of us at Skydome. :) we had a fabulous time out. and my daughter seems to have had a very traditional girly sleepover - full of staying up too late, giggling while lying in bed with her bff and then sleeping in the next day. :D she was extra cuddly the next few days, but i'm totally fine with extra snuggles with my babe for a night out on the town with my hubby! :D

more new words

yesterday my daughter said her first 3 word sentence: "I la loo!" (translation = I love you!) holy beaming mama pride!!!! :D :D :D and today, she proved that she knew how to use them to basically say sorry (for pouring her bowl of peas on the kitchen floor :P ). oh man - am i in for it now! she knows exactly how to melt my heart. :)
so, today her new words were elbow, sorry and up (instead of uppy). :)

***heart swelling***

oh what they don't tell you...

is how brutal it is when illness hits the whole family over the Christmas season. that things pass from one person to the next with zero discretion about who has to take care of whom, or obligations to go see family. nope, coughs and colds are pretty standard fare for parents of little kids, but oh man, when you hit your first. true. stomach. flu. it is horrid.

waking up every 10-15 min to wretching beside you in bed. going thru umpteen towels as you try and sop up puke from your bed/prevent it from seeping thru. nursing a sick toddler only to have it come up again (but, i don't know what i'd do if i wasn't breastfeeding my toddler still :) ). and then getting chills, fatigue, achiness and nausea (sympathy? real? who knows...) a couple days later?

oh yes. and it gets better too. then your child gets a cough, it develops into bronchitis (but you don't know this yet) and because your toddler doesn't know how to spit phlegm out, she swallows it and then pukes it up, right along with Christmas dinner when all your in-laws are visiting.

it has been a heck of a holiday, if i can even call it that. i think i'll go back to work to get better! LOL.

What my baby girl can say...

well, i'm most recently lamenting my baby's favourite sentence: "No Mommy."
but, she does use it with Daddy too, so that makes me feel less the target of her toddler-defiant-ness! LOL.
i thought i'd use this post though, to write out all the things my baby can say. i frequently hang out/have playdates with mothers with 2+ kids, and find myself comparing my daughter to their same-age daughters. but i forget that their daughters are #3 in the birth order, not the first, like mine.

R can say Mama, Dada, Mommy, Daddy, Ami, Papa, no, yep, up-up, uppy-uppy, down, potty (sounds like boppy), apple, yum-yum, milk, water, bottle, Nennie (Jennie her daycare provider), Emma (Jennie's daughter), Ivy (=other kids she knows with a name starting with I), baby, wow, oh wow!, light, tee-tee (teeth, toothbrush), tv, whoa!, all done, more, "a boo" (a book), pillow, lie-lie (lie down), babu, dry-dry....poopy, pee-pee, off, owwie, bubbles...

and i'm probably missing some, but my baby is so smart! i love her so much! even when her toddler-ness drives me nuts LOL. :)

yes, i'm blogging about another giveaway

but who doesn't love free stuff? ;) Organic Girl is giving away See Kai Run shoes! These are awesome, resiliant, cute shoes! Go check out Organic Girl and tell them I sent you. :)

Win a Nursing Shirt!

BumbleWee Nursing Wear is giving away a nursing shirt every day for 30 days! enter here. :) gotta love nursing shirts. makes the whole NIP (nursing in public) thing much easier.

Intentional Parenting...deep (?) thoughts...

I was having a playdate last week where another mom talked about her philosophy for raising her child. She is a very organized, routine loving mom who has used the Babywise techniques with her child and has gotten (younger than my 18 month old) her child down to 1 nurse a day, has been trying her on the potty since 9 months and I'm assuming the child is sleeping through the night.
Anyways, it got me thinking - does everyone have a parenting philosophy? Does anyone ever have one for their first child??? Cuz I feel like I'm just surviving. My poor "starer child"... :P

I guess my point is that I feel lost at my kid's present stage and am thinking (but not knowing how) to be much more intentional in my parenting...

community / village / life together

so, a couple of my good friends talk about their "tribe" or their "village" and how much they love how it takes care of them and their family. how they do life together. i have been lucky to be a part of a couple of online "villages" that have banded together around eachother during recent tradgedies. but it makes me think more and more about how to create this kind of a village in real life.

i find it to be quite a challenge to have a true sense of a village living in suburbia. with only one car (grumble grumble). with all my friends in other areas of the region. with a busy 17 month old that still doesn't sleep through the night (and a mommy who doesn't know how to go to sleep early anymore - yes, i know i'm still up. :P)

i long for a close-knit community. i long for closer friendships with my friends. i long to be more supportive and in general, more in the lives of the people i love.

i find this challenging because i seem to be pretty addicted to online communities/forums. i love my Facebook, and am a pretty active participant in at least 1 forum and less active in a couple more. this leads to a lot of online time. so much that my daughter likes to crawl over to me, beg to be picked up and sit on my lap while i'm at my laptop (embarrased smiley). so, what do i do? it is so easy to be a part of an online community. it's only words, and you rarely ever interact in real life (unless you have IRL friends on your forum too). you can "be" someone else too, when you're online.

so, how do you balance your online life with your IRL community? how do you balance home life with your blogging/other online presence(s)? i long to know. and to be challenged to really develop my friendships.

poop

so dh and i recently cancelled our diaper service and started washing our own. and the question i asked myself this past week - why the heck didn't i start this earlier?????!! it's saving us $100 a month ($20/week with Bear Bottoms) that we currently don't have, and it really is easy. and it works with our front loader too! i always thought there'd be a lot of different cycles you'd have to run back and set it on, but all i'm doing is a cold wash/rinse without detergent and then a long hot wash w/ detergent (currently using Tide Free & Clear) with an extra rinse tacked on the end. there's a button to push to get the extra rinse, so i only have to go back down to put it on the hot wash and then to put them in the dryer. and when we get a clothesline up, i'll put them out there.

so, i've rented some dipes from a good friend and eventually want to build up my own stash (slowly :P). there's a contest being run by Dirty Diaper Laundry that i would love to win a Bum Genius 4.0 from. please visit their website via the button to the right. :)

beautiful clothing...

at Eden's Bouquet and a wonderful (very generous!) giveaway is happening at the Born2Impress blog. i love the Cottage Heirloom collection for the GORGEOUS dresses, no matter how impractical LOL. i'm such a girly girl!

please check out both sites!

Auto Draft

The Vintage Pearl giveaway

my friend Meghan is having another great giveaway here: http://www.thetuckerstaketennessee.com/2010/05/take-prize-tuesday-vintage-pearl.html for a piece of jewellery from The Vintage Pearl. check it out! :)

back to work

well, about 4 wks ago i headed back to work. boy has it been a tough transition. probably more for me than for my daughter. she is so social and loves being around other babies and around older kids. she cries if she sees me leave, and always points to me when she sees me at pick up time, but i think i'm the one having the harder time.
let me tell you, i never thought getting out the door in the morning would be harder than it already was for a non-morning person like me, but add a baby into the mix, and voila - a more late me! :P at least with my hubby carpooling, i have one less person to worry about getting out the door.
and talk about bag lady - i am THE bag lady when i go to work. i have my purse, my work bag (which is either a messenger bag or my rolling bag), my lunch bag, my pump bag, the diaper bag, and anything else i need to run out of the house with. waaay too many bags! :P
but, it is getting easier, which is an encouragement. and it turns out that i won't be working this summer, so i've only got till June to survive, then i can enjoy my baby full time again! yay!

i love giveaways

and i love that i have a blog to post giveaways on. LOL. Amy at Mommy Mentor is always doing them - she is so generous! check out her websites and enter to win the awesome MightyBe bag from Ju Ju Be! http://www.mommy-mentor.com/2010/03/april-giveaway-your-choice-of-new-ju-ju.html

a new item i found - isABelt!

you know that awful gap that happens at the back of your pants when they fit great at the front and look good on your butt, but (ha ha) someone can see your underwear??!! well, there's a product i saw today that helps solve that! it's called isABelt. it's special because it doesn't look bulky under your shirt when you wear it like normal belts, but is as thin as those plastic bra straps you can add to your strapless bra. isn't that cool!


Today's Diva is offering a giveaway for this item. check it out! :)

i really want to win an Ergo

from Organic Girl. she is still running the giveaway on her blog for a great Soft Structured Carrier (SSC) called the Ergo. it is like a Mei Tai but with buckles instead of tying long pieces of fabric. i keep borrowing friends' Ergos and really like how much more supportive they are with my heavier toddler. i can also get a SSC much snugg-er (is that a word?) to my body to help distribute the weight of my dd on my body.
check out Organic Girl's site, giveaway lists, and more!
http://www.mommybloggers.ca/2010/02/ergobaby-organic-carrier-giveaway-ends.html

so most of you know i love to shop...

and have quite the stamina for all day shopping trips! but, i hate to go everywhere and not find what i need, let alone be dragging my daughter along with me (takes even longer!). so, i decided i'd start a series of posts about the best stores in KW for shopping for things i need.

today was vacuum repair. i heard about this place from a friend at church. it is called Keille-Klean on Lancaster St in Kitchener across from Gulf's Steak House. there is an older gentleman there who runs the shop, and it looks like his sons/grandsons work for him as well. i was told he always has or can get parts for older vacuums, and i took one in that is probably 25 yrs old. they were very polite when i came in, sending one if the employees out with me to help get the 2nd vacuum (yes, i had two broken vacuums in my house (arrgh!) from the car and carry it in. they also told me i could park right beside the building instead of behind it in the parking lot when i'm dropping off things for repair. very polite, and very kind and helpful! probably the best customer service i've had in a long while.

i'll definitely be referring people there!

i love Organic Girl!

and someday i may win something from her. i seem to be loving giveaway blogs these days, and i'd love to win an Ergo.
check it out! http://tinyurl.com/yzw6no9