Elisa’s Day

hey, an update !! man, the ol’ blog updates a few and far between in the summer. i know it’s mostly because the few blogs i read are mostly “local” and people i know in real life, and the real life truth is, us crazy canadians are out sucking up as much nice weather as we can because we all know that at least 6 months of shit weather is just around the corner.

not much going on around here. well not much that seems eventful or worthy of mentioning really. just the same old routine……ashley already said it. garden.feed kids.laundry.more gardening.get your own snack please.knitting.chickens.chase baby.more laundry.no fighting.clean.give up on cleaning. more garden.chickens.baking.as always laundry.knitting.baby what are you eating off the floor?stop fighting.garden.etc.

other then that, not much. every saturday we go to the farmers market and meet up with friends. all the kids run around the park and all the parents drink fair trade coffee and eat delicious home made treats the fair trade coffee lady makes. there’s been the odd play date. and everyone under 5 feet tall saw the dentist yesterday and sees the eye doctor next week.

yesterday we re-arranged the girls bedroom. we’re having some sleep issues right now. with two bedrooms and four kids. one of whom is not yet sleeping through the night on any kind of regular basis. so for a while now we’ve had molly in a room by herself and the three older girls in the other room ( they are huge rooms ) but much hi-jinx was ensuing after bed time. which doesn’t matter much now, but in a few short weeks, when we’re back to 6 am wake ups it’s going to be a problem. so first we tried olivia in the babies room, which she wanted to try. but it involved waiting until molly was asleep, then sneaking in. and then molly started getting up more in the night. which may or may not be related i guess, but last night with her room back to herself she slept through so…….but then i had to remove the instigator. which is, duh, hannah. if you know 3 yr olds, you know hannah is the instigator. so we have this crazy “hallway” between the two bedrooms. it’s really something else. a sitting room, or something. it’s too big to be a hallway. it’s where my MIL sleeps when she’s here. it has a huge dresser and a day bed in it. as well as this big recessed area with built in shelving where i keep all the kids books and some toy overflow. so yesterday i put hannah’s little toddler bed in there. which ryan and i have been jokingly referring to as “the hole” in all my theoretical plans for this sleeping arrangement. so now hannah is “doing time in the hole” hee hee. i mean, her bed fits perfectly with just enough room to walk beside it, and if it works out, i’ll paint it and let her put all her stuff on the shelves. and that will be hannah’s space until molly is ready for a room mate. which i predict to be 6-8 months from now. not ideal, but hey, what can you do.

we also hit the big thrift store in hopes of finding a bookshelf or something for the girls room yesterday, which i did not find. but found quite a few good dresses for miss hannah who wants to only wear dresses. and this is the one downfall of hand me downs. if your “thing” doesn’t mesh with your big sisters “thing” when she was that size then you’re kind of screwed. and then the cashier let me know that today was a big half off furniture sale and they would be opening up the back area ( this location is a sorting station, so it’s 80% warehouse to it’s 20% retail space ) so while i write this i must remember that we have to be dressed and out the door by 8:45 to get there for opening. and speaking of thrift stores ( of which i am queen btw, i can spot a quality garment from 20 paces no matter how much crap it’s crammed onto the rack with ) there is a CRAZY on where my dad lives. one day while the girls were in their art class hannah and molly and i checked it out. and once i learned that the pricing structure is as follows “unless otherwise marked, shirts are 25c and pants are 50c”…..well…….i cleaned them out of every decent thing in any size my girls are or could wear ( gap,old navy, childrens place….some like brand new, hello cottage country…..i guess if you own a half a millon dollar cottage you don’t wear through your clothes so much ) it was ridiculous !! i told me dad i was running into town to hit that place every single time we visit now. i saw a women on tv who tried to not buy anything new for a whole year. i have been thinking about this a lot lately and wondering if i could pull that off. anyway…….

we’re back up there in a week and a half for the pottery class too. i am kind of in denial about having to pack again for another week away. though i did leave a lot of stuff up there, anything i could manage without.

okay, must get moving, it’s 7:45, and getting everyone ready and out of the house takes about an hour best case scenario.

well i hope everyone enjoyed their toast in bed breakfasts and home made gifts. i know i did. we even had strawberries in the house for a nice side to my toast and coffee ( a rare occurrence, i try and only buy them in season, but i wanted to decorate a cake i made a few days ago with some so we had leftovers…..they are c.r.a.p. compared to local ones of course, but after a long winter of basically apples and citrus fruit, they were still a nice treat ) and there was much beautiful art work of course as well. then all the girls headed out to brunch where my grandmother and sister met up with us. 4 generations of girls out for brunch. nice. did i get a picture you might ask? well of course not. the intentions were there. but between getting out the door on time and then a flurry of activity getting home ( involving a last minute stop with my sister for a gift for my mom, something she mentioned only the night before at dinner that she saw, finally giving me a solid gift idea to go with the tree we had already gotten here ) no picture was taken. sigh. we’ve been going out for brunch since olivia was a baby. and every year we take a picture. then last year we missed it altogether, this year forgotten picture…..next year i won’t forget.

ryan’s “gift” to me for mother’s day was to paint the bathroom !! Whoo Hoo!! our house is log, but all the interior walls are board and batten. my intention was always to paint them, but i just haven’t gotten to it yet. so finally the first paint was put on. and it just looks so, so good, and makes the room so, so much brighter that it’s all i can do to not just drop everything else and paint and paint until it’s all done. but at least it gives me real vision of how much lighter the house can be once we do get it done. i’ve been living in the cave long enough.  and even better, we picked up a new “eco” paint. it’s made from recycled paint and is low emissions but the very best part is, it’s $15 a gallon, regular price ! so that is awesome.

a quiet week planned so far. i am on a big cleaning and organizing mission. it really hasn’t ever been done since we moved here. so it is getting done now. and i am hoping to sell enough stuff on kijiji to make enough money to buy a wooden swing set for the girls. there is a beautiful cedar one at costco i would love, but it is pricey…..so we’ll see.

hannah is supposed to have swimming today, but she has been complaining about not feeling well all morning and just fell asleep on the couch, so i’m thinking we’ll skip it today. olivia is also on antibiotics for a throat infection……so it’s very likely she passed it along.

i have some bread sitting on the floor in the kitchen, in the sun, hoping it will rise. it’s always a challenge to get bread to rise in here when it’s cold. and make no mistake it is cold. two days after i pulled out all the kids winter clothes, you know it snowed. actual snow. and it’s been freezing at night ( literally, the kids water table is frozen ) but it isn’t supposed to last…..i hope i hope. it sure is annoying to hear the furnace kicking on in may.

every couple of weeks i realize it’s been too long since i took a picture, of any body yes, but especially of the baby, because well, it only takes a few weeks at this age to miss a whole stage. then i take a whole bunch.

having a laugh and showing off her teeth

enjoying the weather

and just being generally cute…..i love when the little baby hair starts to get long and they get the fluffy head going

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.

my house, that is. finally, from the chaos.

see, swimming lessons are only from 5 to 6, sure. but add in the travel and change room time, extra hour. and to be ready to leave by 4:30 i have to start getting ready at 3:30, especially since i need to feed the baby before we leave, partly in hopes she’ll sleep through the whole lesson, but mostly just to better the odds she won’t want to nurse in The Sweatiest Place On Earth.

so….subtract time spent feeding the kids ( breakfast, snack, lunch, snack ), subsequent clean up, and nursing and rocking/walking the baby from the earlier part of our day and that leaves precious little time for anything else. my house had settled into complete chaos. my dining room table had been thought lost forever under a mountain of crafts and various craft shrapnel ( and my children, not so good with the cleaning up after themselves……that’s normal right? )  there was laundry through out the house in various stages of completion and the bedrooms…..well they were a right off, my own the worst of the bunch since it is the hub of baby activity and all baby related mess, and therefor all the children are constantly wandering in and out dragging various children’s messes behind them. plus my collection of water glasses alone was pretty staggering.

add on top of that, the two days we spent driving and then chilling at family cottages, where absolutely nothing got done at home, well……it was pretty bad.

but hey, yesterday i spent the whole day catching up and have reclaimed my house from the brink. laundry was washed, or folded, or put away, which ever was required. the table was excavated. the bedrooms were cleaned. i even vacuumed some of the house.

i am definitely happy swimming lessons are over and am looking forward to just enjoying this month and spending as much time at the cottages as we can. at the beginning i was undecided about signing them up for the august session. but i’ve opted with not. summer is whipping by too fast. i’m sure the craptastic weather has a lot to do with that. and the baby. nothing makes time seem to rocket by like an infant does.

well, good old “spring” is upon us. saturday we woke up to a light snow covering, which did melt off quickly, but although none of it stayed on the ground, it continued to snow and gale the entire day.  which brings us to sunday, sunny and beautiful, the older girls spent a good part of the day outside ( with no coats ) playing with the soccer ball, hanging with the chickens, i saw some hula hooping and some skipping as well. good thing they took advantage. because now we’re in a full on winter storm. none of this melt off stuff, it’s coming down and staying on the ground. and it’s supposed to keep coming for at least the next 24 hours. sweet.

surprisingly the buses still ran, so both sidney and olivia are off to school, and hannah is down for the day with a mystery fever, so it’s a quiet day around here for me. hannah is in day two of said mystery fever. no other symptoms, but it’s a persistent fever, that has her pretty miserable. so she’s in my bed, watching some blue’s clues. and if she still has it tomorrow i’ll call our doctor.

so i guess i’ll spend my day cleaning, possibly baking….but our freezer is full to the brim since ryan and i spent our last day before his new job started making muffins and cookies and brownies to freeze for his lunches. and then i made my first batch of bread by hand ( our favorite recipe, which makes three loaves, is too big for the kitchen aid ) and i definitely need to work on my kneading technique, but it came out pretty good for a first attempt. so any baking i do today will have to be for the here and now.

maybe i’ll finish off the baby blanket, i kind of stalled on it, but my grandma was by for a visit yesterday, and she’s knitting socks for the girls and wanted to measure feet, and i was re-inspired i guess. plus she showed me how to measure it properly ( i’m trying to make it square ) and there isn’t much to go.

and i was inspired my ashley to finally get together a cd of pictures to print for albums. the last time i had some done, hannah was 10 months old. hahaha. it’s fun going through all the old pictures though, i’m up to june 2008 now so i’m getting there. so maybe i’ll finish that off today as well. totally unrelated, but looking at old pictures made me miss our old house. i wish i could have picked it up and moved it out here. don’t get me wrong, there were times i loathed that old victorian, but it was getting so much closer to being “done” and looking so nice. staring over again sucks. and more snow isn’t getting me any closer to being able to start painting here since i won’t start until i can open the house up for ventilation.

lots to do, as always, but i think i’ll start with checking on the poor hannah bun.

it’s pretty bizarre to me that i can surf the web ( well, on dial up, can we call it surfing? more like doggy paddling ) while the power is out ( crazy winds i think ) but the laptop is running on battery and the phone lines are still working, and with no fancy router or dsl box or anything…… here we are, old school.

it’s very dark in here. i really need more candles.

eta: after about 1.5 hours the power is back, yay. i only went online this morning in the dark, to see if my friend hillary had her baby last night, which she did !! so congrats again hillary

well, it very quickly went, saturday/sunday New Moon, sunday/monday Eclipse and here we are. but the fourth book is sold out, everywhere around here, and the waiting list at the library is silly long……so i guess i just keep my eyes open for it and hope it turns up. until then i can get back to my regularly scheduled life. i waded through all the laundry i didn’t do over the holidays sunday night ( while my mom was still reading eclipse, leaving me with no vampire romance to fill my time -insert dramatic sigh- ) and yesterday i did refrain from reading all day to begin catching up on some way over due book keeping, which needs to be done in a desperate way. today i finally went grocery shopping, i had been putting it off after blowing our grocery budget in december with lots of holiday extras. but i have lunches to make again, so it had to be done. now i have to try and restore order to my kitchen ( oh how i hate putting away groceries, so much more then the actual shopping )  and then back to the book keeping.

busy weekend coming up, the swimming lessons start back up, only this session i have hannah in ( with me….hmmm bathing suits and public change rooms….who’s idea was this anyway ) on friday, the older girls in on saturday back to back and then it’s a birthday party for the kids sunday, a toboggan party if we get some snow between now and then. i guess we’ll see.

oh, and i did get started on sidney’s scarf next. very excited to be actually be making something, and since i have no real aptitude or love for sewing, knitting i am enjoying much better. i think i’ll look for an easy blanket or something next ( i’ll stick with square or rectangular objects for now…..though olivia has requested rainbow socks – yeah, of course she has - )

i read twilight. all 500ish pages of it. obviously it was a collection of circumstances that made that possible, the kids still enthralled with their new stuff and playing quietly, a long nap from miss hannah, a movie in the afternoon, dad making dinner and an evening of nothing but reading. i wasn’t sure i would like it, or that i wanted to like it, over hyped teenage vampire romance….for real? but then really, who am i kidding? i watched every single episode of buffy and angel last year, obsessively. i think it’s probably a given, buffy fan, twilight fan. so when my mom borrowed it from my cousin ( as a highschool english teacher she likes to know what her students are reading ) and offered it to me yesterday i figured why not. i really do love books, even though i rarely read them any more. in my pre-child life i read a lot of books, and often in a short amount of time. in fact, when ryan and i went to mexico in 2005 ( the only significant amount of time i have ever spent with no kids, well, since having kids ) i read at least 5 novels i can remember in that one week. that’s just how i am i guess. if i am really enjoying a book, it is very hard for me to put it down at all. and that is very hard to do with kids. so i thoroughly enjoyed it. i sat with my feet up, ate the last of the christmas treats ( including some awesome home made carmel corn from my aunt ) and just read it. all. is it a literary masterpiece? of course not, but did i expect it to be? nope, good old fashioned fun reading. now i wish i could get my hands on the others. though i doubt i’ll have opportunity to finish one in a day again, i still am looking forward to finishing the rest of the series. if i didn’t expect there was a waiting list i would probably head into the library today. i may still call them.

i did manage yesterday, before my mom brought the book by, to get all the christmas decorations put away…..mostly. i am always amazed at how empty the house seems after they come down, even though that is the way it is most of the time. and i am always very happy to put them away and do a big clean and find a spot for all the new stuff.

christmas was great, if not a little long, but that is standard. the kids got a lot of really cool stuff this year, hand made stuff, and books and puzzles and only a few, well chosen, high end toys ( for the most part, my dad is always good for some department store crap, but even that wasn’t so bad this year, mainly a lego set with dora and diego characters, which the kids have played with every single day since they got it on the 20th, so really, how much fault can i find in it? ) lots of family and great food….one minor mishap, with ryan’s mom falling ill right after we arrived, meaning we had to turn around and come right home…..ahhh the drive to ottawa, how i hate you. but she is recovering quickly and will probably head down our way some time this month. and i did get to use the first five hours in the car to finish off my very first knitting project. ryan gave me needles and three balls of wool for christmas, one scarf for each girl. my mom, an accomplished knitter much to my surprise, did cast on and off for me, and was handy to fix any little mishaps, but hey, i knit a scarf, which is pretty cool.

back to regular life on monday.

seems like i have had a trip into to town every day for the last 5 or 6…….but after chugging half a coffee this morning and running out the door as early as possible to beat the crowds, i believe i am now done !

quick trip to the mall for a few last minute things, doctors appointment, few more last minute things downtown, the dairy barn ( the local dairy here has a little drive through spot called the dairy barn )  and groceries. now my goal is to just relax, enjoy the holidays and not leave the house for 5 days. yay.

tomorrow my sister, aunt, cousins and grandma will all be coming to my mom’s for christmas eve festivities and homemade pizza, and for the first time i don’t have to leave super early to put the kids to bed……i can run next door, put them to bed and be right back…..nice……then it’s just christmas day and relaxing for a couple days until we venture off to ryan’s mom’s in ottawa on the 28th.

if my overall goal is to not leave the house for 5 days, then my mini goal is to get the house picked up and back into shape today, and start wading through the mountain of laundry, before company starts descending tomorrow. because right now it is a sad disaster. it seems i can not stay on top of it these days ( that applies to both laundry and the house cleaning ) so we’ll see how far i actually get today. one of these days i’d like to figure out just how many hours a week i spend doing laundry, including sorting, folding and putting away of course, because everyone knows the actual throwing it in the machine is the easy part. then again, maybe i don’t want to really know.

i hope everyone has a great and safe holiday !!

well, december is finally upon us. we have spent the weekend picking away at the decorations. i guess i have a lot of decorations. i don’t know. i don’t feel like it’s tons compared to….say…..my mother. but compared to most people, i guess it’s a lot. so i have to give myself several days to get it done, a bit at a time. so far i’ve gotten all the garlands decorated, and little bits and pieces put out. the kids decorated their tree ( i am more then slightly compulsive about my perfectly decorated, red and silver tree, with many, one of a kind, sentimental decorations, and hey, i know that’s no fun for kids, so they also get their own small tree with blinking multicoloured lights and their very own decorations )  and i am enjoying unpacking everything even more as they years go by.

i have been collecting some of this stuff for a long time. as is evident by the bag all the strings of beads were in,  from the good old superfresh mart. that’s a “corner store” that was across from one of our apartments in toronto. you know, one of those awesome city corner stores. that is really a small grocery, convenience store, deli and farmers market all in one. that bag is from some time in the late 90’s. ryan and i had a good laugh last night when i pointed it out.

all that’s really left is the tree. my lights were probably that old as well, i think they were also in a superfresh mart bag, until last year. one string is toast. which leaves me one string short of a lit tree. so annoying.

so i abandoned the tree for now, and filled the advent calender instead. since i know there will be eager girls off the school bus tonight looking for their december one treat. once, i bought sidney the cardboard deal, with the little doors and the “chocolate” that is clearly only a few ingredients off of full on wax. because i think it’s fun and a nice tradition, the two things christmas should be about. but ewwwww. i ate one of those chocolates and never bought one again.

then a couple years ago, my mom gave us a big fabric one, with little pouches you fill yourself. perfect! so now it’s one of my favorite parts, i go out and scour the dollar stores and bulk store for little surprises small enough for the pouches, and we can mix it up so it’s not all candy, i also found stickers and christmas erasers and pencils and a few other little things. and candy….duh.

this year i also want the big bowl of mixed nuts, and a nutcracker. i always remember as a kid, having those, and clementines too. and my grandparents with their big bowl of ribbon candy. it’s those little things that are only around at christmas that really make it special, and i want the kids to remember those things too.

hannah will be awake soon, to meet my nap time goal of cleaning the kitchen as well as getting the calender done, i must now leave the internet.