Elisa’s Day

lets just see if i can bang out an update while the kids are playing outside and the baby is sleeping. that’s right……playing outside because it is beautiful and spring like out there. it’s going outside with no hat and mitts weather out there. it’s the sun actually feels warm weather out there. it’s a beautiful thing. i mean sure, the kids play outside in the winter too. but there is only so much fun to be had with the mobility of the michelin tire man. and it’s always a race against the clock, how long can you play before your numb fingers, toes and nose force you back inside? on a good day it might be 45 min, but more often then not it’s about 20 minutes. so it is a happy day when i can kick the kids outside sans hats and mitts and they’ll stay out there a good hour or so.

last week was a crazy one. i was on the go all week. which means my house is trashed in a serious way. i can generally keep on top of the mess (to a reasonable extent anyway) but if too many other plans start creeping into the picture, well, something has to give. so mess was left. laundry was not done. it all spirals out of control pretty quickly believe me. so today was spent cleaning. though sadly, not much laundry has been done yet, but i still have the afternoon.

and now i hear my baby crying, so off i go to get her, feed her etc. and will have to finish this later

okay, two hours later. baby is playing on the floor with the kids. roast is in the oven. ryan made our very first successful pie for dessert. we have both tried pie crust before and it always ended badly. but he did it !! yay. also the house is reasonably clean again and we even made bread. a productive day.

yesterday we spent the day in peterborough shopping. my grandma was nice enough to escort us to costco ( membership required ) and we even got to leave the kids with my cousins so we could shop in peace. i have had to start shopping at costco. it’s kind of annoying to drive to peterborough to do it, but the kids are getting bigger, they eat a lot and there is still one more to add to the collective appetite. imagine you buy on bunch of banana’s and then you doll them out three ( soon to be four ) at a time ( let alone if you want one ) well, one bunch doesn’t go too far. i need the giant bag of grapefruit. the giant bag of oranges. the huge box of granola. the 44 pounds of flour. the six pack of whole wheat spaghetti, because everyone here loves spaghetti and one box of noodles is barely enough. if we want leftovers i need to make a box and a half. you get the point. ryan says our basement is starting to look like a bomb shelter with all the overflow storage in addition to the home canned goods. what i really need now is a second fridge for the basement. ryan has a little bar fridge down there that is packed, but i’m going to start watching the classifieds for one. and i definitely can’t wait to get some new egg layers in the spring. ( or sooner ) we go through 2-3 dozen eggs a week. we’re also getting a freezer pack of local beef from a guy up the road to go in the deep freeze with our chickens this year.

not much else going on. another round of swimming lessons over with. and a few extra weeks in between this time, as the pool closes for some much needed renovations.

other then that, march break, no real plans, but we’ll head up to my dad’s for a few days just to get out of the house. i’m working on ryan’s sweater. it’s coming slowly, but coming along all the same. i finally got around to reading the Lost Symbol. it was fine. a more formulistic writer there may not be, but entertaining all the same. then my mom brought over Year of the Flood. i’m just trying to decide of i should read Oryx and Crake again first. i also have a few easy patterns and some fabric i picked up for next to nothing at our fabricland, soon to be closed. i’ll give sewing another try and see how it goes. i’d like to be able to make things for the girls.

and there you have it, the mundane minutiae of my life, but now my baby wants me and i need to switch the laundry.

a few random things i have been meaning to talk about floating around in my head, i could do a small update for each one, but’s lets go with a scatted, random, longer one instead. but hey, ryan fixed my admin so i can upload pictures, so at least now there will be cute baby( or big kid ) pictures along with the rambling updates.

lets start with the most inane. you already know i love tv, but i especially love crime drama. so anyway, i watch criminal minds. and a couple seasons back they replaced a character. and the new guy was fine. never bothered me one way or the other (though i liked the old character better ). then a couple weeks ago ryan and i watched a special about the simpsons. and during that special i learned that the actor who plays said character also voices fat tony. and NOW all i ever hear while watching criminal minds when he talks is FAT TONY FAT TONY FAT TONY. i NEVER heard it before. now it’s all i hear. not only am i boggled by the fact that it seems so obvious now but that i never noticed before, but i find it distracts from the show when all i hear is fat tony.

sidney had to take something to school today for their valentines party. there was a schedule sent home at the beginning of the year, and we were scheduled for the end of yr party. yesterday she came home telling us that one girl scheduled for valetines day is absent so sidney’s been switched. which, whatever, honestly i could whip up cookies or cupcakes from scratch, no problem, even on that short of notice. what is so !#$%@ annoying is that the school board policy as of this year is “any snack sent to school to be shared with classmates MUST be bought” …….seriously…….because you know, it’s all this bullshit health board regulations and general fear mongering about baked goods and the general public. so you can’t provide anything to the general public that wasn’t prepared in a health board approved kitchen anymore. i’m not sure exactly what kind of evil i’d be spreading with my home made cupcakes, maybe they came in contact with nuts, or i prepared them on a salmonella covered counter or something. because i’m clearly an incompetent moron, as is anyone offering homemade baked goods ( uh, just seems not likely to me ) so instead, i had to get in my car, drive 20 minutes, spend $10 on some chemical heavy, probably don’t even taste good, valentines cookies from the grocery store. it’s nice to know that chemicals and preservatives are considered a better alternative then anything homemade.

as expected my good sleeper was replaced by a not good sleeper around 4 months of age. and it’s been a rough go ever since. i just really can’t get up every 1.5 hours. maybe, if i she was my first baby and i could dedicate all of my energy to her, if i didn’t have three other children that require my attention. i find it very interesting to see the difference between parenting one or two kids and parenting more then three. the luxuries afforded a parent of a single child as far as time and focus are pretty staggering. i know we made the conscious choice to sacrifice some of that for a large family. and i’d do it again. but i’m off topic already. i just can’t get up every 1.5 hours. it is not an option. and since sleep training at this age is also not an option, i was definitely delving into desperation. then my parenting magazine that my MIL always gets me from the kids magazine drive came. it was the yearly “sleep issue” and although it didn’t hold any main articles that held any information i didn’t already know, in an article about the newest fad “sleep doulas” i read one small paragraph about the possible downsides of nursing to sleep. now i nursed all my other babies to sleep all the time. maybe it caused issue, but never issue enough  for me to really notice so…….but every baby is different, and this fell into my “acceptable to try” category ( along with sleeping in bed with us, different sleeping positions in her crib and cereal before bed, which yes, i know is a myth, but hey, remember the desperate part? not a lot of options to even try at 7 months ) so we started nursing at wake up and then a couple hours later in a wakeful environment  ( no more dark quiet nursing ) and then when it’s time i rock her to sleep instead. it has made a shocking difference right away. crazy. a couple night she even slept through the entire night. but most nights she now wakes once  which is a huge improvement on 4 or 5 times ( obviously in the night we still nurse to sleep, it seems to be different for whatever reason, maybe because she isn’t really even awake ). and for several days now, when she is ready for her morning nap i have laid her down in her crib and she goes quietly to sleep all on her own. i only discovered this when i put her down to do the girls hair the other morning before they left for school and she had quietly fell asleep by the time i finished. it only works for the morning nap for some reason, but whatever. best breakthrough ever. seriously.

and now, my favorite sleeper, almost to small for the big giant baby. heart bum.

if i had known caitlin would tag me to reveal ten things, i may have saved my little admission about my love of action movies….. . but i think i managed to come up with ten more.

1. I hate to cut grass, as a child it was my most hated chore. Ryan and I have an arrangement. I never cut the grass, he doesn’t even know how to work the washer and dryer.

2. I am a big sci-fi fan. I believe in aliens. Not little green men probing rural farmers aliens, but I believe that we couldn’t possibly be alone in the universe.

3. I love fashion. When I was young I wanted to be a fashion designer. I’ve been watching fashion television since I was 12. In grade 8, as part of the enrichment program at my school I got to go to Toronto with the enrichment teacher, to take a tour of Flare magazine and meet the fashion editor. Now I feed it by watching things like What Not To Wear, Project Runway, and Say Yes To The Dress.

4. Related to that I also designed, and choose the fabric for my wedding dress, which my mom sewed ( the downfall of my above mentioned dream was that i love fashion, but i learned, hate to sew )

5. I am an adult child of divorce. I was 19 when my parents divorced, people often think that makes it easier. It does not.

6. When I was 16, I moved 3 hours away to live with my grandmother on my mom’s side. I lived with her until I was 18 and then got my own place.

7. Parenting four kids is my biggest challenge every single day. Sure it’s easy to have four kids, but being a good parent to them is anything but easy.

8. I love to shop. Not in a spend lots of money, come home laden with bags type way. I just love to browse. I could spend an entire day wandering a mall and not buy anything, and it’s not just malls. I love auctions, yard sales, flea markets, and little down towns with cool stores. I love finding the perfect thing or the great deal. My favorite person to shop with is my mom.

9. I haven’t had a drink in eight years. I stopped drinking when i got pregnant with sidney and just never bothered to again. I don’t know why, it’s not a committed “i will not drink” type thing, but i guess, for me, it’s something i don’t feel really meshes with the 24 hour commitment of parenting small children. I expect as the kids get older i’ll be likely to have the odd beer or glass of wine.

10. I love peaches, but hate all things peach flavored

like ryan, pretty much all the blogs i read regularly have already done this so i guess it stops here.

how about a post that isn’t about who’s sick this week ( though for the record it’s no one….yay )

over the holidays i watched die hard, in fragments. it seemed like every time i turned the tv on ( and that’s a lot when i’m nursing, i just prefer to have a quiet moment in front of the tv then to try and nurse amongst the chaos of my other children and the baby is getting to old to juggle a book over because she’s all, hey milk lady, what is that thing? let me take a look while you spray milk ALL OVER THE PLACE and then let me wrench myself off your nipple every 3 seconds to check back and see if that thing is still there…… because that isn’t annoying at all…….) die hard was playing on one channel or another. so i watched it, probably in it’s entirety, but in random bits and pieces.

anyway……it got me thinking about movies, i love movies of pretty much any kind. it was just recently that i finally admitted to myself though, if i had to pick an overall favorite genre, it’s the good ol’ action movie. i love a good old fashioned, blockbuster, action movie. action/sci-fi….even better. i mean, i love a good documentary and critically acclaimed movies….sure, but it’s action movies that are my true favorite.

and i started thinking about the small group of movies that i will watch anytime they are on tv. for whatever reason, even though i have seen them all countless times, i’ll watch them again. i mean, sure, your choices can be limited when your up at 4 am looking for something to watch with baby…….but that isn’t even it, i will just watch them again, and again. they aren’t even necessarily my favorite movies, if i had to make a list of favorites it would be different ( though some would over lap ) but i guess just because it’s a favorite movie doesn’t mean i’d watch it time and time again like these ones.

any of the die hard movies. i heart jon maclean (and bruce willis for that matter)

any of the star trek tng movies, including the first, made for tv, one with kirk in it

independence day.  i also heart will smith

the day after tomorrow

the matrix ( i don’t need to clarify which one, because anyone with half a brain knows there was only ONE matrix movie and any thing coming after, that may have almost ruined it completely with it’s unbelievable terribleness, well it just doesn’t even exist now does it )

any of the xmen movies

there are undoubtedly others that would make the list given the opportunity, but these are the ones that seem to play almost constantly on tv for whatever reasons and so i know for sure i will literally watch them over and over.

for anyone keeping track thats Nov = H1N1, Dec = strep, Jan = stomach flu. at first i thought food poisoning was probably responsible for the traumatizing 8 hours of violent vomiting i endured monday night. but the fact that a general feeling of nausea has stuck with me all week now, makes me think it’s more likely a flu bug of some kind. now i feel fine as long as i don’t eat, just very hungry, and as soon as i eat i feel kind of generally crappy. i don’t want to go on and on, so let me just say, vomiting, well that is just something i could do without ever, EVER, having to do for the rest of my life. and on the very small bright side, i’m probably only one more illness away from fitting into my really skinny jeans not just my in the middle jeans. lets move on shall we.

the baby has managed to avoid all illness somehow, until now, she has a very runny nose. which given the options, i’ll take. but there is something very sad about a stuffed up, snotty, baby. other then that she is great. and huge ( ironic considering she had trouble gaining weight for the first few weeks ) and so cute. all thigh rolls and baby giggles and constant milestones. you know what milestone they need to add to the ol’ baby books? reaching out for tattoos. around 6 months your baby will start to try and reach out for your tattoos. and loves her dad, keeper of the hoody strings. there are times he gets her from bed and she doesn’t even seem to have her eyes open yet before the hoody string is in her mouth.

the older girls are all settled back in to regular routine. everyone is happy to be back in swimming lessons after skipping the last session. hannah is especially doing well, as i suspected she would, now that she is old enough to go into the pool alone. and mom is thrilled to not have to get into the pool as well. yay. and we’re starting a game night a few nights a week with the older girls which is fun.  we got sidney this game for christmas which is always being played at my family functions. it was fun, interesting enough that adults enjoy it, easy enough that olivia ( 5 ) can play it. i think it’s hard to find that combination.

i have a couple new books from christmas i’m looking forward to starting now, i had a few other things i told myself i had to finish first, and now they’re done. it’s kind of a waiting game now right? we just try and survive the end of winter and hold out until spring. so much i want to do this spring and summer. this house needs so much work. and the garden was sadly neglected last years as well. i am not a fan of gardening, but i am a fan of being able to step out my door and grab fresh veggies any time, so i will just have to learn to love gardening i guess.

molly has moved into her own room. happy to have my room back for sure, even if she spends half the night in bed with us, at least there are times i don’t have to sneak around my own room hoping not to wake her up. which means that all three older girls are now in one room ( there are only three bedrooms here, three huge bedrooms ) so it’s all kids who sleep through the night in one room. once molly is older and sleeping through, we’ll split them back up two and two. it was actually hannah that got the ball rolling though, declaring she was a big girl and wanted to sleep with the big girls. ( and oh, how thrilled the big girls were LOL )

i’m also hoping with spring comes a few months illness free for me. i generally don’t get sick alot, usually only when i’m run down from little babies. i don’t care what anyone says. babies are a young girls game. getting up every 2 hours was way less physically taxing on me at 27 then it is at almost 35. like my friend ashley says though, there is nothing to do but suck it up. ever night i wonder how i’m going to be able to do this for another year or so, but in the end i just will, and then it will be over……. for ever, lots of years in my future to sleep. this too shall pass. every time i have to drag myself out of bed i curse it, but every time i look down at her sleeping on my chest, little perfect face turned up to me, little round mouth, little chubby hand at my collar bone, i know it’ll be gone too fast.

where to even start? i was progressing nicely to a well organized , prepared holiday. i finished all my shopping baking and knitting early. leaving me the week before christmas to clean my house, like really clean it, you know, mop the floors and everything, get ahead on laundry, and just chill with the kids and wait for the big day.

then i got a sore throat. we had been on the go, a late night on the 17th at the annual party at my mom’s school for kids and grandkids of the staff. a christmas party the morning of the 18th at a friends house from play group, she’s an ECE turned SAHM, and clearly insane, because she must have had 25 kids in her house for this party, complete with crafts and games and much chaos while all the moms sat in the kitchen and drank coffee….awesome. then an hour drive on the 20th for dinner with some of ryan’s family. ryan’s staff party the 21st, miss molly was big hit of course. but tired and not willing to sleep at the party, maybe if i hadn’t have left my beco at ryan’s aunts house she would have, but instead we left early and i went to bed early, suspect of my newly sore throat, but hoping some salt water and an early night would see it gone.

quick backround: 5 years ago, when olivia was a baby, i got strep at christmas, only i hadn’t had strep since i was a kid, didn’t even occur to me that might be what i had when my throat got sore and i started running a fever….i figured i had a cold. i let it go a long time before ending up in emerg. i was extremely sick by then, and olivia had it too. it ruined mine, and most everyone else’s christmas. it was truly horrible, and it made me forever paranoid of sore throats, never ever wanting to go through that again.

so luckily, i called doctor the very next day and she was still in the office, and she’s awesome, so she said, with the holidays coming, lets just start some antibiotics and screw the throat swab that takes days to get results. by catching it early with antibiotics and tylenol every four hours for the fever and pain, i was able to celebrate christmas like a mostly normal person. it definitely sidelined my well organized and prepared holiday, but it didn’t ruin it, so i call it a victory.

we had a nice, if not ridiculously hectic christmas. we travel too much. and we do too much on the 25th. it changes next year. but this is this year, so our day went like this. wake up and open gifts. have something to eat and the kids play for a bit until we head over to my mom’s and open gifts there. then she goes nuts trying to get a turkey dinner ready and i go nuts getting us packed up. then we pound a turkey dinner and pack up the kids for the ( hellish ) 4 hour drive to ottawa. we drive at night so the kids will sleep, it’s the only civil way to spend 4 hours in the car with small children believe me. and now we’re home and we still have to drive to my dad’s on the weekend.

we did have some fun while in ottawa this year, instead of just hanging around the house for several days, we took the kids to a museum and then the next day ryan and i took just sidney to the art gallery ( well, and molly of course, where the boobs go molly goes ) but it was nice to do something with just sidney, as the oldest she definitely gets the least one on one time with us. sadly, she found the art gallery to be pretty boring, but had fun getting away from her sisters for sure.

even though everyone did seem to make an effort to par it down this year, it still a huge amount of stuff. there is just no way around it with so many people buying for so many kids i guess. but good stuff. lots of craft stuff, and cool books. puzzles and games. extra cute flannel nightgowns ryan’s mom made ( which makes them even better of course ) and some toys too of course. our bargain of the year was definitely these little radio style mp3 players i found at winners. they are big and plastic and ugly, but they we 20$ and the kids love ‘em. they came with some kids songs and ryan put on some stories and some good old fashioned rock ( like early beatles ) and disney ballads and they are a big hit ( especially with olivia ). and no ear phones, that was imperative for me. speakers, much more annoying for us yes, but much less damaging to kids little ears. i cringe when i see kids with ear buds in, literally cringe.

so many highlights for me, hard to pick any. i cleaned up, ryan and my step dad made me beautiful things, ryan made me a beautiful mirror out of an old window frame. rusty made me a beautiful side table with and old sewing machine base. my mom and mil both gave me nice sweaters i love ( among other great things ). my sister managed to find two old collections of fairytales, grimms and andersons, at a used bookstore after i had said i’d like something like that weeks ago.

molly got a few little things, but the teething necklace i ordered after seeing it on ashley’s page is the cutest. really a baby in a necklace? too frikken funny. so adorable.

and my blurb book was a big hit, coming just in the nick of time, on the 22nd. really wishing i hadn’t finally got of my ass and printed all 500 of those pictures i just did, that are still sitting in the original bag, still out of order ( most annoying part of having pictures printed for sure ) because blurb, so much better. i may just start over from the beginning and switch everything over to books.

all in all a good holiday. if you made it this far you’re a hero. must get through spell check and post because baby is sitting with dad, but getting closer and closer to realizing she’s hungry.

i got up at 4:00 am so i could get to baby fed and in the car and be at the swimming sign up as early as possible.

that’s right, 4:00 am.

now must get moving, pick up friend and must, MUST get coffee before heading over

Apparently i spoke way too soon when i said that we all escaped unscathed from our incident with The Flu. Olivia had a strange and intermediate version of it about a week later, she would have one symptom for a day or so then be fine for a day or so, then next symptom. Very odd. And she definitely has the nagging cough which sidney never had. And she is definitely The Child Most Likely To Infect, so i should have known that it would be olivia, she of no personal space not even in the face of flu germs, that would give me the flu. I’m guessing it was the morning that i rolled over thinking ryan had slept through his alarm only to find olivia had crawled into bed with me, breathing her flu all over me while i slept. Sigh.

So i have spent 6 hellish days in the grips of death. Or so it felt at the time. That is the reason people get flu shots. Right in the thick of it, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to NOT avoid this hell if at all possible. But then it’s hard to have any kind of perspective or reason with a raging fever and an entire body ache. Of course the main symptoms only lasted a couple days, unfortunately the ability to retain any kind of calories escaped me for quite a bit longer. For 5 days literally anything but water went right through me. So i existed on water. And fat stores i guess. And i slept and was cold and dizzy a lot. Oh yeah, don’t forget the part where i’m still nursing a baby all of the time. So if you think any of those fat store calories were going to me, think again. By sunday night i’m not even sure there were many going to the baby who was also sleeping a lot, and running a low temperature of all things. Like me….cold and tired…..and calorie starved. I wonder just how long you can nurse a baby without taking in any calories anyway? Thankfully monday became the day i started eating again. Slowly. Cautiously. And now, on wed, i almost feel like i human again. And hey, it’s not all terrible….i bet i lost at least 5 pounds, it’s the pre-holidays swine flu crash diet.

Except i also lost a week. A week i couldn’t really afford to loose. Now i’m not sure i’ll get all of my knitting done in time. And the mountain of laundry is truly daunting. Laundry is daunting around here all of the time. I do at least one load every sinlge day. So imagine after one week what kind of back load i’m looking at. Ryan did his very best to step in while i spent most of the last week in bed. He cooked, he “cleaned” ( as only men can, really, what is the deal with that? It’s another entry all together ) but he doesn’t do laundry, so it’s really really behind. Plus i planned to be putting up decorations this weekend. How can i do that when the house is a mess?

Ahh the mess. While i was sick, ryan got a more realistic insight into the life of the stay at home mom, and safe to say, one thing we are both 150% fed up with is constant mess. I can’t live in mess. I know some people can. I can’t and i won’t. And if my kids won’t start picking up after themselves, then i have told them i will get rid of every thing…..all off it. Because we have talked to them about it more times then i can count, it just never seems to make an impact, so I’ll leave them with one doll each and books. No toys no mess. I am so sick of toys strewn about constantly. Too many toys. No respect for any of it. I am having serious purge urges. I WANT to get rid of it all. I want to see if it would even make a difference to them. Would they then learn to appreciate all that they have? Bah, i doubt it. But we’ll find out because i am so not kidding around this time. We already started the first bag last night. Anything not picked up after it’s played with gets put in a garbage bag then put in the basement for me to decide it’s fate from there.

Oh, and thanks to the perfect tidbit of info from the always lovely ashley ( the fact that i could do the book layout on my own computer was the clincher ) i did download the program from blurb ( it took a whopping 3 hours…..hahahaha ) and i did put together the book, i hope it looks as good in person. Now i just have to get it saved to my memory stick and into my friends place to upload it, hopefully tomorrow.

i’m still dizzy sometimes, and yesterday i thought i’d lay down for an hour and woke up 3 hours later. so i have to take it easy. but today is knitting and laundry.

i have decided to put off my attempts at learning to crochet ( again ) until after christmas. only because i have several gifts i want to make, and it makes sense to stick with what i already have a (semi)-grasp of. so i have a few different knitting projects on the go already. all fairly simple of course, next year if i want to get more complicated i better start in august. i am working with my first pattern, up until now it’s been scarves and blankets, straight knit, knit, knit. it’s a simple pattern, but a pattern all the same, and it’s coming nicely. i’m excited to be making gifts for people, it really is satisfying.

i was also thinking of possibly using one of those book printing sites to make up books of photos for the grandparents, has anyone used one of these? it seems like a bit of a daunting task the more i think about it, only because i can’t do it from here, being as we’re all hooked up to the world wide web like it’s 1994 and everything. i would have to take photo’s on a disk to a friends house and work the whole project there high speed style. and i have no ideas what kind of time i’m looking at as far as doing all the photo editing and layout stuff.

i gave in to my inner hipster yoga mom and bought molly sophie the other day. though i paid slightly less then that at our local fancy baby store, it was still a pricey chew toy. but since i have not bought a single thing for miss molly, aside from one new sleeper to come home in, i figured, what the hell.  i have to tell you, sophie recieved at least 20$ worth of love the very first day. babies really do love to chew sophie’s nuby little head. go figure.

today is an olivia home day, so also her little friend. i’ll be packing everyone up and we’re off to the early years center. finally. we had to skip last week since sidney was all fluey. she survived btw. quite nicely. she wasn’t even that sick. i mean, i don’t know for sure it was The Big Scary Flu of course, but considering it’s rampant around here, it’s a safe bet. and surprise surprise, it wasn’t Big or Scary, it was just the flu. and people are STILL asking if we’ll be getting the shot. even after we’ve all been exposed to it? really? gah.

the early years center has started the pizza lunch wednesdays again, so i think we’ll be taking advantage of that today too. then when we get home hannah and molly ( hopefully) can go right to bed and the girls can go off an play and i can get some knitting done

i can’t even get a handle on how fast time is whipping by us these days. it was thanksgiving and all of the sudden it was halloween and i just know that before we know it it will be christmas!

the last few weeks have been a blur of activity. halloween costumes were made, a baby blanket was knit, the resulting chaos that became the house with so many other projects on the go, was finally cleaned and organized. it was probably a good week after thanksgiving before i even got the extra tables out of my living room ( they actually came in handy when sewing halloween costumes )

i have another project to knit in the cue and i really want to start teaching myself to crochet, so those are my focus for november.

i just finished re-reading The Timetraveller’s Wife. so good.

sidney has the flu. I don’t know if she has THE flu, or just A flu, and truthfully i don’t really care. my kids are healthy, with no pre-existing conditions ( like asthma ) to complicate, they have strong immune systems (  the last time i can recall sidney barfing was in 2004 ) so i am really not scarred of THE flu, it’s a flu like any other flu. i do have minor concerns about the baby. sidney is to go nowhere near her. and i wash my hands before i pick her up every single time. and i will be keeping a very close eye on her for any fever or breathing issues and will take her into the doctor immediately if i notice any. hopefully we were careful enough soon enough that it will be a non-issue, there is nothing worse then a sick baby.

speaking of the baby…..she’s so big. i’m in full denial of her bigness. she can’t possibly be big enough for toys. but she is. her favorite is this little haba mouse. she loves to look at it while i shake it, she loves to talk to it and touch it and especially to chew on his little ears. she’s all slobbery smiles and giggles. she finds sidney especially funny. when sidney laughs, molly laughs. sometimes we tickle sidney just to get the baby laughing. i think she might be teething.

the girls had a great halloween, much trick or treating was done, much junk food was procured. sadly, being sick has kind of taken the fun out of it for sidney, who only got to enjoy her bounty sat. night and sun. morning before the headache set in. for now the supply is still ridiculous, but if she’s sick more then another day or so  i will stash away some of the goods for her before the other two ( and dad and i ) finish it off.

we missed the last farmers market, though i doubt there were many vendors, it was a dark and rainy day. we did make it last week though so i could stock up on macoons. if you like mac apples and ever find yourself with the opportunity to try a macoon do so. it’s a cross of a mac and some other apple i can’t remember. best apple ever. i pretty much bought out the apple guy, as many as i could fit in my crisper and ryans little beer fridge, now our apple fridge. i always look forward to late fall for the macoons.

and mondays, i look forward to mondays because it means dexter, pvr’d from last night.