Elisa’s Day

well, change of plans for the weekend. instead of bday parties and a trip to my dad’s, it was chicken pox. sigh. that would be sidney. with the chicken pox. so lets re-cap shall we ( for anyone keeping track ) from novemeber when we all got H1N1. then came strep throat for me. then came the stomach flu for most of us. then olivia got strep. then hannah got pink eye. then sidney got strep. and now she has chicken pox. and olivia has what i was hoping was only a nasty cold, until this morning when she told me her ear hurts. sigh again. seriously.

we’re not a germaphobe family. we don’t believe in hand sanitizer or antibacterial soap or any of those other fear mongering type things. i think into each child’s life a few germs must come. but man. i’m getting a little beat down this year. when i took sidney to the clinic to confirm her chicken pox, her health card came up our old address. which means it hasn’t been scanned since we lived there 3 years ago. so yeah, we get the odd colds and flus, but antibiotics are rare around here usually.

the only good thing out of all this is so far the baby has had nothing ( knocking wood here ) yay for breastfeeding and all it’s crazy immunities.

speaking of the baby, she turns one today, which is crazy. sidney didn’t start crawling until the week before she turned one, and i thought that was a record never to be broken. but here we are, turning one today and no crawling. she can cover some real distance scooching around on her butt, but no crawling. it’s funny when we go to the early years center and there are little nine month olds crawling circles around her.

olivia’s party was called on account of chicken pox, so we’re going to send out new invitations this week and hope some kids can come out on the 10th of july. it’s harder once summer has started, but what can you do? we’ll see.

now i better get everyone dressed for yet another trip into town to “drop in” at my doctors office and hope she can fit us in ( i’m sure she just loves it when people do that……but she always fits us in so……. )

happy birthday molly jane.

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.