Elisa’s Day

we made it though olivia’s party. fun was had by all. though i have to say, being around other people’s kids really gives me an appreciation for how well behaved my kids are. and made me hope ( oh please oh please ) that my kids are not that poorly behaved at other people’s houses.

rude, defiant, demanding…….a 5 yr old with a sense of entitlement is a truly sad thing. not all of them of course. but most of them. ( more then half anyway, at least 3 out of the 5 little girls here were pretty unbelievable )

so now it’s just a waiting game……waiting waiting. did some moderate level housework yesterday. cleaned all our bedrooms and bathrooms, vacuuming, and moved the babies stuff in our room around how i want it, it was just kind of shoved in the corner before. kind of hoping it would at least produce some BH. which it just barely did. no plans today but to do a bit of work on the computer, make some bread and chill. tomorrow is doctors appointment and errands.

i think, if there is still no baby by the weekend, we’ll go up to my dad’s and sit on his beach, the kids have been bugging to go and timing just keeps working against us.

i have a big ol’ head sitting in my pelvis………..

oh wait, i do

saw the new again doctor yesterday, said baby was definitely lower, said my blood pressure was “always low for pregnancy, which is good” and seemed surprised, probably because i really pack on the ol’ pounds during pregnancy, no matter how many people wanna say how “small i am” or how i’m “just belly” i put on an average of 50 pounds every single time. lucky for me it all comes off eventually (well not all, dude, i’ll never be the skinny wiggs i was before i had sidney, nor do i expect to be)  also said the other patient he had due around the same time as me delivered tuesday night. lucky her.

i have everything i need for olivia’s party. tomorrow i’ll make the cupcakes and pizza dough.

our day in the city started off with a meeting, which we ended up being early for. you never know what kind of traffic/construction/other time delaying nightmare you might run into, so always better to be early right? of course nothing on hipster queen street west opens before 10 or 11, so unfortunately our only option worth taking was the kind of swanky looking crepe place. some delicious cinnamon sugar crepes with strawberries and a hot chocolate is a great way to kill some time. then a successful meeting, and one more loose end tied up……nice. it’s been a long year. really. a loooong year. but it seems like now finally, all these loose ends are getting tied up all at once. it’s a bigger relief then i could have imagined.

then we headed off to spend some time with the lovely and talented bill baker. an afternoon spent with bill never disappoints. there are few people who’s company i enjoy more, and “interesting” can’t even touch the surface of that guy, for real. we had a great lunch in the market and then while ryan was getting tattooed i wandered around china town looking for some unique little thing to bring home for the girls. then back to chill at bills studio with some fresh cherries from the market, and put my poor feet up for a bit. the only thing i miss almost as much as the food, the ability to buy fresh fruit, house plants, baked goods, a mop and any other random thing you might need from practically every corner

after we wound down our afternoon with bill we headed off to meet up with some of our oldest friends, carrie and jason, for dinner. so great. don’t get to see them enough for sure. and of course some sweet thai food. nice.

all in all a lovely trip to the city. a lovely day away from the kids too i might add. been awhile since we had that. of course by the time i got home, not just my ankles, but the tops of my feet were actually swollen……yikes. but by morning they were (almost) regular sized again.

a long week of millions of things to do stretching out ahead of me again  ( and therefor a lot of early mornings driving ryan to work as well )…….i just want to sit around doing nothing, honestly, but hey, such is life

saturday. i just want to get through saturday. then i can have this baby any time please.

yesterday was our annual school trip to the peterborough zoo, annual because they do it in both years of kindergarten at the girls school. which means that we have done it the past two years with sidney and now olivia this year and next and by then hannah will be in kindergarten.

the peterborough zoo is a sad place really. last i checked, one sad old camel ( who’s cell mate died just last year, of old age i imagine, so he now has some scruffy donkeys for company ) a few reindeer, a bunch of riled up lemurs, and an empty python enclosure, does not a zoo make.  not to mention the ramshackle assortment of  remaining animals that barely compete with any small farm. oh look hannah, turkeys…..oh wait, we have turkeys at home…….throw in a rickety old miniature train ride that has the same script it has since i was a kid ( pretty much the entire zoo is the same as when i was a kid ) and involves short ride through some tress looking for poorly painted cut outs of animals. the biggest draw is the huge playground, including a giant slide down the hillside.

the school goes there because it’s free no doubt. but the zoo sucks so much because it’s free, no doubt. if they just charged a small admission i’m sure they could improve it by leaps and bounds, as it is i have no idea how they even maintain it to the pathetic standard they do.

but the kids love it all the same. and though there could have been few things i wanted to do less yesterday then get up at 5am so i could keep the car then drive the 40 min to the zoo and then walk my big, pregnant, butt around the zoo all day, that is exactly what i did. see, the huge playground i mentioned. well it’s not fenced. or supervised in anyway. and it’s big, and sprawly ( having been added on to over the years many times ) and the zoo is just open to anybody, oh yeah, and free right, so you don’t even have to fork over 5$ or anything in your master plan to snatch some kid. it’s hard to keep track of a few kids on it in the most vigilant of ways. and i just can’t in good conscience leave that responsibility up to someone i don’t know. we’re talking four year olds here. so we go. i can’t actually go as a parent chaperon, because i have hannah with me as well, but i just go, and follow behind and park myself on the playground and keep my eye on them ( while olivia’s official parent “chaperon” sat at a picnic table chatting with the teachers, a picnic table that was in no way, in view of even a third of the playground )

so another year, another trip to the “zoo” under my belt.

there’s only 3.5 weeks of school left too. this is going to be a crazy few weeks for us. a lot, a lot, of stuff going on, not the least of which of course, is you know, a baby coming. but seriously that just comes in the midst of all kinds of craziness…..of course. ryan and i are headed off to the city on saturday which i couldn’t be looking forward to more. a day away from the kids and spent with good  friends, and hopefully some good food. have i ever mentioned how much i miss city food? oh yeah….right…..only every chance i get.

that is pretty much what i plan to do today. i am pretty sore from my day spent almost entirely in the kitchen yesterday. but i did make doughnuts. and bread. and many many muffins (call them muffins, actually mini loaves using  carrot cake and oatmeal quick bread recipes…..normal muffins just don’t cut it after a few hours of hard labour apparently)

the doughnuts were definitely a challenge in the cooking department. i haven’t done a lot ( any?) deep fat frying in my life, so there was a big learning curve there……too hot and they were burnt, too cool and they were ooozy in the middle. but i’ll call it a success since less then a third ended up in the garbage and the rest are deliciously grandma like. once i got the temp right it was (pretty) smooth sailing.

the rest is all just necessity, bread and muffins for lunches. all packed into the freezer now. with the exception of the ones i sent to work with ryan for his friend at work, who sometimes drives him home, and who hopefully, if properly bribed with muffins, will come some day and dig out the scourge of grass that has over taken our ridiculously huge front flower garden. because even if i liked gardening, i’m in no shape to garden and my mom finds it overwhelming i think compared to her little garden at her old house, plus she’s two weeks from exams and pretty busy…….and he, well, he’s a young, strong, 19 year old, who seems desperate for homemade muffins so………

speaking of gardening, ryan made some serious headway on the ol’ vegetable garden this weekend, with much help from olivia ! it was so nice, one for him to have help ( both girls helped for a while ) but two, olivia loves it and helped almost the entire day even after sidney had lost interest and wandered off. it’s nice to see olivia  find things she likes on her own and not always be just two steps behind sidney.

so after my day yesterday of constant baking and dishes, i think i’ll take it pretty easy off my feet today since it’s just hannah and i. some work at the computer, read a little, maybe invite a friend and her little guy out with promises of homemade doughnuts.

the dough is in the fridge and tomorrow i will attempt to make doughnuts.

my mom came over to help me out with the dough. partly because it’s a grandma recipe, so it says things like “one large cup of white sugar” and so i ask myself , what exactly is a large cup anyway? and also because it had instructions over my baking skill level, like “beat egg whites until stiff, but not dry” whatever the hell that means and the same egg whites you later “fold” in, something i have heard but never done before.

plus my mom has an idea of what the dough should look like at the end, and said it looked pretty good. so now we just have to cook them tomorrow, and we shall see.

gotta tell you i’m looking pretty forward to doughnuts. really, even if they aren’t great, how bad can homemade doughnuts really be?

another crazy friday looming ahead. ryan and i are sharing one car right now, as we attempt to save a bit of money and rid ourselves of the last few financial obligations left over from our (hopefully) soon to be closed corporation. it’s actually much less annoying in general then we thought it may be, mostly because i’m happy to hang around the house with the kids while ryan is at work the majority of the time. but there are still errands to be done, and hannah has swimming on fridays, so fridays have become this crazy day where i squeeze in as much running around as i possibly can. this is mostly due to that fact that ryan starts work at 6am. so in order to have the car, i get up at 5:15 and get dressed and drive him in to work. this is something i choose to do as little as possible ! LOL. so i try and squeeze as much into fridays as i can. the amazing part of this is of course, with two extra adults under this roof, i don’t need to wake all the kids up to do this…….*insert huge sigh of relief*……because how much would that suck? instead i leave sidney and olivia a note ( that they have yet to wake up and see anyway ) that says they should only go wake grandma up if they need to, and to otherwise wait for me, i’ll be home really soon. hannah still sleeps in her crib, so i don’t need to worry about her wandering around, and my mom is up to get ready for work shortly after i leave anyway and listening for any stirring.

so today i have to, drop sidney at school, then it’s the post office, swimming, my dad’s office to make some copies, bank, doctor to get my records for delivering doctor, dollar store for livie’s b-day invites and groceries ( which involves hitting three stores for the best deals and the bulk barn ) and by then it will probably be late enough that i’ll have time to run the groceries home, throw anything in the fridge/freezer that needs to be there and head back into town to pick up sidney and ryan.

phew. which means hannah skips her nap ( yes, my sweet hannah, still naps, for several hours every afternoon ) and i will have done none of my required sitting around with my feet up.

my doctor stopped delivering babies, maybe a year after i had hannah. i was disappointed then, but now that it actually affects me, i am even more sad. so yesterday i had my first appointment with the doctor who will be delivering, and he’s insisting on playing it out “by the book” ( something i would have had the luxury of avoiding, no doubt, if i was with my family doctor, who knows me, and knows my extremely routine pregnancies ) so i now have to see him every week until i go into labour….sigh…..and he doesn’t work fridays ! ha! so i guess it’s one more early morning a week for me, but at least i can spread out the errands and have two slightly less hectic days.

i’ve decided to have olivia’s birthday on the 13th. i figure i’m probably screwed no matter which weekend i pick. that will likely be the one i end up in the hospital for, so i’m just going to play the “odds” and assume it’s more likely i’ll go to term or late then a whole week early. it just hit me the other day, with olivia being 8 days late, her due date must have been the 21st of june. the new babies is the 22nd. pretty funny.

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eta: well, it just didn’t happen. once it dawned on me that hannah was on the last day of her antibiotic for a nasty chest infection and i realized she had to come home for her mid day dose…..that was it. done in. plus, on a normal day hannah is fine skipping her nap, but coming off being sick, well, swimming kinda wore her out, so we managed to get about half our list done before heading home. and now she’s gone for her nap, olivia is in my bed with a movie and i’m gonna lay my big, tired, BH having self down on the couch for a good ol’ re-run of star trek: tng.

maybe we’ll cross off a few more errands before it’s time to pick up sidney and ryan,  if hannah doesn’t sleep too long……but i definitly see a friday evening spent grocery shopping in my immediate future.

and counting.  the bassinet and change table are assembled, clean and set up in our room. the little tiny laundry is done ( with lots of help from the older girls, and lots of “it’s sooo cute” and “will the new babies arms/feet/legs really be this small?” ) and my mom took me out diaper shopping and bought me 5 new bumgenius to try out……is there anything softer then a brand new cloth diaper? lots more to do of course. but it’s a good start. and looks like another rainy and cold weekend ahead of us, so lots of time to get that kind of stuff done i guess ( i won’t complain too much as it was snowing out west….yeah, actual snow……my poor SIL, if it snows here, i think i might cry, for real, actual tears )

i was trying to explain to ryan to other night ( to no avail really, you just can’t ever understand it can you?…..unless you’ve done it )  what it was like when every. single.  movement is encumbered. it’s really amazing how quickly you settle into this lumbering existence, where every minor chore has you winded, as the norm. i mean, it’s less then half the pregnancy we spend this way really, maybe the last few months, maybe less, yet it really just feels like that is how it is and  i have to keep reminding myself the sheer shock at how very quickly i felt actually normal again after having hannah. that feeling dawning on me of “oh, wow, so this is what it’s like to have my energy and mobility back to a normal human’s level” pretty much the instant i was home from the hospital i’d say. not so much with sidney and olivia. probably because i was younger, skinnier pre-preg and also more enamoured with the whole magic of pregnancy thing. but yeah, with hannah, i remember it, and i try and hold on to it more then ever, because right now, as i have to divide up my day between things to do and time sitting with my feet up so my legs and feet don’t feel like they’ll explode and my back doesn’t give up on me, it seems like an insurmountable task to ever have my house in actual order again. but just 5 ( give or take of course ) more weeks……….

it’s a long weekend here, which is of course less exciting when the weather is crappy. we may go up to my grandma’s cottage, possibly, if the weather turns. but for now it looks like more picking away at indoor tasks. good thing there is an endless supply of them.

we had a lovely one. normally we go out for brunch, my mom, the girls and i, but this year i was remiss in setting that up early enough and by the time i tried all the places in town were booked. but my step dad made us an amazing waffle brunch instead, better food, didn’t have to leave the house….good deal. i did miss getting dressed up and going out with the girls, but it was a cold and miserable day anyway, a far cry from the pictures i have from past years of them in their spring dresses. ( it is 0 degrees right now too as a small aside about the craptastic weather btw. freaking cold )

he also made us a turkey dinner, so with my day free of cooking all together, ryan and i took full advantage of the stay in side weather and lugged ( well he lugged, i supervised of course ) baby stuff up from the basement. 6 weeks. that can seem very long, or very short. and i have a lot of baby laundry to do. and i made black out curtains for all the girls windows, i had some modified versions from our old house we made due with last year, but with the big sale on a fabric land this weekend, it was time for some “made to fit” ones.

i have the get the girls up for school very soon, but i wanted to say a happy mothers day, to all of us, who have chosen to sleep ( and i use the term loosely ) on someone else’s time table, to never again eat a hot meal, and who have traded personal space and quiet for endless chatter and slobbery kisses. us, the archivers of the endless artwork, the finder of the lost “favorite” toys. to all those who have surrendered to infinite laundry and craft mess and toy chaos.

happy mothers day. i hope all your homemade cards and crafts from school were as funny and amazing as mine.

i think so far, the most surprising challenge of having kids has been dealing with school. i guess i didn’t realize it would be so hard, but given my feelings about school in general i guess i should have seen it coming.  between piles of homework in grade one and bitchy principals chastising me for jay walking in front of the school ( instead of walking the entire block each way to the cross walk from the extra parking across the street…..in the rain…..with a baby…..) and curriculum that seems to involve a lot of nothing while reading and writing your letters properly and holy fuck, just holding your pencil properly is all left to home, it’s all i can do to hide my outright disdain for the whole system from the kids.

and i know that they have to learn how to use computers, i get that. but how much time a week are they spending in “computer lab” playing pc games, maybe a bit of that time could be dedicated to making sure they all learn how to hold their pencil properly so that they don’t develop a bad habit that will plague them the rest of their lives. ( my mom, an english teacher, is always saying how poor most of her students handwriting is, and that most of them now print which is so slow. yet plagiarism is so rampant with the internet that she makes them write in class essays a few times a year, and it is literally painful for them since writing things by hand is becoming a lost skill, something considered un-improtant i guess, why learn to write nicely when your expected to type anything anyone else is ever going to  read anyway? )

i’m pretty sure i have already complained lots about the homework thing. homework should start midway through elementary school, grade 4 or 5. and even then, it should be minimal, a few projects, small assignments, just to get into the habit for highschool. you know who shouldn’t be bringing home 3o minutes worth of homework a night? 6 year olds!! ( i think that’s a conservative estimate btw, but i couldn’t say how long it actually would take since we don’t do it all )

i did just read an article that there is maybe going to be a shift back in the other direction, that one school in ontario has put a ban on homework all together in elementary school, with good results so far. and it quoted a few new studies about the fact there seems to be no correlation between homework and improved school work, or test scores. that in fact it could be the opposite, too much homework is actually bringing the level of school work and test scores down. so i guess it’s a start.

and the general meddling in my parenting……holy crap….like the vaccinations thing. or all this “homework” half of which is just poorly veiled attempts by the government/school board to make parents spend time with their kids. and while the sad reality is that some parents probably need that, we do not. we do lots of things with our kids and i don’t need some lame reading/worksheets homework sent home to have a reason to read to my kids. in fact i have so many better things to do with my time with my kids then homework it’s not even funny.

we’ve talked about homeschooling….on and off. i really doubt i have the patience to do it. plus, those days, when it is just hannah and i…..those are nice. besides, you know who loves school? 5 and 6 year olds!! which is why i try and keep my disdain to myself as much as possible. the kids really do love it, and i’d hate to taint that for them so early.

but i think about it still….my mom guesstimated you could cover the required curriculum in approximately 2 hours a day. that leaves a lot of hours for baking and art and fun experiments and playing, not to even mention, oh how i loath to pack lunches, it’s so very hard to pack a litter free, healthy lunch five times a week for a picky eater who goes to a peanut and fish free school……….i know right?………but then there’s the missing of the non-academic aspects too, learning the structure and the social aspects of school, both important i think.

i guess, as with all majour decisions we’re required to make for our kids, who’s to really know which is the right one?