Elisa’s Day

now i just can’t wait until there are raspberries and veggies to add to the bowl too.  man real strawberries are good. the very first one eaten made all the work worth while.

i have written, had to abandon half way through, and then never returned to, several updates. june is just a crazy month of work outside and end of school stuff and birthday parties……..so yeah.

today is bake the cake for olivia’s party tomorrow. ( which i will ice tomorrow morning while ryan is doing the swimming lessons/farmers market/pick up ballons run ) then i must try and clean my house to a semi-presentable level for tomorrow. and run into town when ryan gets home for the food for the party ( picnic outside, olivia’s choice ) and any other last minute stuff i need. oh and finally plant the last tomato seedlings which have been sitting outside on the deck in pots for weeks now. oh and take some pictures of the baby…..today one of my goals is to take some pictures of the baby. ryan was always the big picture taker around here. but now he’s not here so much and the pictures are much fewer and far between for it.

time to get the girls up for school.

spent most of the long weekend in the gardens, both of the vegetable and flower variety. i’ve learned to embrace the gardening ( not that i had any choice really ) but once i realized i could overcome my minor bug phobia by just wearing gloves all the time ( it literally makes my skin crawl when a bug touches me……in a completely illogical way, which is what makes it a phobia i guess ) it all got much much easier. so with my MIL’s help we got it 90% of the veggies planted and made some real headway on the ridiculously huge flower gardens. all that is left for the veg garden is a second planting of some things to stagger it a bit, and to put the tomato seedlings in after they spend another week or so hardening off.  this year, after two failed attempts at tomatoes on our own, ryan found a local woman that sells heirloom seedlings. so he went at got some and they look great, i really hope we get some tomatoes this year. now if it could just rain, that would be great. until we get some rain to fill the shiny new rain barrel, situated conveniently off the garden shed roof, right in the garden, it’s several trips back and forth to the house with watering cans each time we water, which in this heat is also, several times a day.

this morning before it got too hot, i dug out all the “soil” around our front walkway. which was really less soil, and more this weird gravel of busted up clay pots. see, the previous owners seemed to want as much garden with as little work as they could possible have. so instead of actual weeding, they instead employed every wacky gimmick and trick they could think of to keep the weeds down, which in the end, is just making the lives of those of us who don’t want they crazy, scrubby, invasive ground cover heavy, type garden going on, well…..hellish. everywhere you dig there are buried tarps and rocks, bricks and anything else they could “put down” to keep weeds from coming through. including copious amounts of busted up clay pots. each time we get rid of some ridiculous invasive thing ( first year, lambs ear, last year brown eyed susan, this year i don’t know, a bunch of other crap ) we uncover all this stuff that was getting choked out, including several lovely variegated hostas. which i can’t transplant to beside my walkway until i dig out the clay pot gravel. oh well…..small steps.

and now, can anyone offer any advice as to what to do about small kids and bugs, mosquitoes mostly, but other biting/stinging ones as well? for myself i cover up completely and use spray when i’m out in the early morning before the heat chases them away. but trying to get them to cover up when it’s already 20 degrees at 7am is pretty much impossible, and i am very reluctant to use bug spray on kids and they have all inherited their mothers crazy histamine reaction to being bit unfortunately. hannah was outside this morning for about 3 minutes before she had 4 HUGE mosquito bites and was stung by something worse. i didn’t see it, but she yelped and there was a chunk missing in the center and clear liquid oozing out so i’m thinking bee or more likely deer fly. then it took about 45 seconds for her whole leg to swell up so i dosed her with some benadryl which took the swelling down but now she’s zonked on the couch. i know some people just react worse then others. if i get a tiny spider bite, it is excruciatingly itchy and will last for weeks. my step father rarely gets bit by anything, and when he does it doesn’t bother him and is gone in a couple days. but the girls are like me. they seem to attract them and then react to them.

last year there were countless incidents of majour swelling and many itchy nights spent treating tired kids with multiple bites and last year we weren’t even gardening like we will be this year or had the weather i think we’re going to have this year…….so since i see a lot, a lot of time outside in our future, especially in mosquito heavy places like the garden, i would really like to know what anyone else does for their kids to keep bites to a minimum

i had a bunch of pictures to go with this entry, of the gardens, what we’ve got done, what still needs to be done……but they are just loading way too slow, so i give up. stupid dial up.

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

since i had babies and started driving again ( the ten years before i had babies i had no car and never drove )  i have had 3 minor accidents. one actual collision and two fender bender type deals, one in a parking lot and one in my own driveway. i have always blamed the “mommy brain” but ryan just thinks i’m a bad driver.

i read an interesting article in national geographic about sleep just last week. it was mostly about how little they really understand sleep, why we do it, why we need it. all they really know for sure is that we do. if we don’t sleep we die. there was a lot of type dedicated to sleep disorders like narcolepsy and apnea. and not a single sentence to all us mothers out there.

the one sentence that resonated with me is this ( paraphrasing ) “staying awake for 24 hours, or getting less the 5 hours for 5 nights in a row is the equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of 0.1″ well, dude, every single mother i know ( with the exception of maybe 2 ) gets less sleep then that.  i haven’t gotten more then 5 straight hours of sleep a night in, what, 9 years…..of course that isn’t entirely true, there are nights i get more sleep, but no doubt averaged out with the ones i only get to sleep an hour at a time and hey, it’s about right. so i guess it really is a fucking miracle i function as well as i do then. which i have been telling ryan for years, maybe now he’ll actually believe me a little more.

it really is true though. the kind of clouded head, the inability to remember anything and be distracted by everything……. that is how i feel a lot of the time. and i try very hard to consciously focus when doing things like operating a vehicle, but one slip in concentration is all it takes. and don’t even get me started on all the minor bits and pieces…..every sink almost over flowed, every pot boiled dry, every load of laundry i go back to find dry in the washer or wet in the dryer because they got put in but not turned on.

why we’re unrecognized i don’t know. because we choose to have kids? i guess. because there is some miracle sleep training method out there that if we’d just submit to, we’d be rocking our 9 hours like everyone else? yeah…..right…… well i have to say that sleep training only works in some cases anyway. no matter what method you’re trying. some babies and kids just don’t sleep well. and if they don’t sleep well, you don’t sleep well. they could have dedicated even one paragraph to those of us, the exhausted masses.

i’d wager a guess that motherhood outnumbers all other sleep disorders.

first things first, thank you for the birthday wishes very much. they were much appreciated.

the laptop seems to have healed itself…..very odd. it just started working properly again, all the sudden.

we had a nice and productive weekend. ryan built the girls a sandbox, a little project that has been on tap since we moved in two summers ago. and it got put to good use for sure. saturday was a beautiful day. some friends came over with their sons and we had a bbq for lunch and the kids played and rode their bikes around and the grownups talked and much fun was had. the sandbox was built before they came, and garden and yard work was done after they left, big accomplishments for a single day.

sunday was sadly cool and crazy windy. so our outdoor plans were switched out for indoor plans. i am knee deep in my most hated of chores, the dreaded clothes switch out. huge sigh. i started with miss molly, because at least with molly, even if her drawers and closet are packed with summer clothes, she will not constantly beg me to wear them no matter what the temperature outside might be,  like a few other girls who will remain nameless. so let me tell you how ludicrous it is, at this age by girl number four. at this age, where you stull can’t resist the odd new cute outfit. at this age where people still want to give you the cute outfits, even though they must know you have countless cute outfits all ready…….molly could, no word of an exaggeration here, wear a different thing every single day of the summer. there is a double bed in her room right now, literally covered in various shirts, shorts, capris, dresses, one pieces, skirts…….probably anywhere between 15 and 30 of each thing……..it’s completely ridiculous. and that doesn’t even count the two new little jumpers still hanging in her closet i picked up at costco because i couldn’t resist the cuteness, or the new things her grandma brought back from her trip south. but anyway……it is what it is. i do believe i have made it through the baby stuff anyway. next is the other girls. it’s much less ludicrous. one tub, packed full, for all three of them, plus a few new hand-me-downs from a friends sister ( the above mentioned friend, who with two boys, has no use for her nieces hand-me-downs ) and a few new things also brought home from grandma’s trip. i think we’re good for this year. sidney usually gets two years out of her summer stuff before she grows out of it and i’m pretty sure last year was a “shopping” year for her.

today is a swimming day, with hannah having a lesson at 1pm and olivia having one at 5:15. and today is an olivia home day, which means that i have the pleasure of dragging not just molly to the pool for hannah’s lesson, but also olivia and the little girl i babysit, joy joy. and i desperatly need to do some picking up/cleaning. which it seems like i always say, but it is always true. i have got to say, that i can barely stay on top of it these days. 4 kids under the age of 8. that is a full time job. that is why people don’t have more then a couple kids, because who can do that and work like it seems everyone feels they must. like i feel i must. i have no idea how i’m going to work and keep up on the house, the laundry the cooking/baking. it’s a daunting thought every time i think about it. i may have a line on a job at a new bar in town. if i could work friday and saturday nights, i think i could make enough in those two shifts a week……the most amount of money for the least amount of disruption, that’s what i need. of course that main obstacle is miss molly. for me to do that she needs to start doing one of two things, sleeping more then 2 hours at a time at night, or taking a bottle. neither of which she seems to have any interest in. but we’re working on it.

speaking of that can i say, oh how i long to sleep. to go to sleep and then not have to wake up until morning. it could even be 5 in the morning, as long as i was asleep the whole time in between. molly is by far the happiest baby i’ve ever had. she laughs more then any of the other girls did. so much hilarious baby laughing going on. she plays happily. she shops happily. for hours i might add. she just doesn’t sleep. ever really. i mean, she naps during the day, but a nap is supposed to be 2 hours long. then she stays up all evening with us, happily. never tired. then she sleeps for 2 hour stretches most of the night, once in a while going for a longer 3 to 4 hour stretch in the early am. it is literally torturous. all i can do at this point is tell myself over and over and over again that eventually it will end. and then i will sleep. and there will be no more babies to get up with. molly’s hideous sleep patterns have definitely helped me along this whole “last baby” journey. like ryan said yesterday morning  “you’re lucky you weren’t the first bay or you might have been the only baby”

but if anything can make life seem that much nicer it is a mild winter and an early spring. it is amazing how uplifting an early spring can be after several brutal and never ending winters. i’d say we are a full month ahead of last year. amazing. this is the first year i can ever remember since having kids, that the girls could actually wear little easter dresses on easter. we went for brunch and everyone had bare legs and arms and it was so warm that day.

eta: after looking at this picture a little, i have to say that hannah’s resemblance to sidney bordering on freakish there……….

yep, that’s me now, entering my mid to late 30’s. huh.

our laptop is under the weather, shutting itself down randomly and often, so i’ll be brief in hopes of making it through this entry without having to re-boot. i think ever since we started blogging you know where ( or maybe you don’t and if you don’t, don’t worry it matters not ) i have always posted on my birthday.

so here i am, 35. wow. it’s crazy how relative age is. how old a number can sound when you’re young, and how much younger it sounds when it’s you. my mom spent the day with my grandmother recently and they got to talking. about how my grandfather has been dead 25 years this year. 25 years!! he was younger then my mom is now when he died ( in his sleep of a heart attack ). then my mom reminded me that she was only 5 short years older then i am now when she was getting divorced. hard to believe. in 5 years i’ll be 40……..with  a 5 year old. crazy.

getting older has never bothered me. and it still doesn’t. fascinates me for sure, but never bothers me.

no big plans today. right now the kids are very sneakily making me a cake at grandma’s house. we’ll have dinner and cake. i got some excellent homemade birthday cards, my favorite thing. and on sunday my mom is taking me shopping and to lunch. nice.

so with that, the birthday picture, i have no photoshop skills beyond fixing red eye, plus i’m in a race against the clock anyway with the ol’ laptop, so here it is straight up, bright and early on a birthday morning……hey at least i had a shower and washed my hair first.

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.

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

“how old is she?”

“3 weeks”

but as i say it, i think….huh, i’m pretty sure i’ve been saying that for at least a week now…….

“no…four weeks……already”

it’s crazy. and crazier yet, how can it seem like i just brought her home but that she’s always been here all at the same time.

all is good here. aside from the weather of course. worst summer ever. i could complain in great detail about everything from single digit temps at night to seemingly constant cloud cover and rain. we’ve slept with our comforter on the bed for most of july. but i won’t. why bother.

the kids are good. there are moments of course. it wouldn’t be parenthood without those moments. the ones that make you want to scream, or pull your hair out. or drink excessive amounts of alcohol or chocolate milkshakes, whatever your preference is. but over all, they are great.

sidney is big, a real big kid. and although she isn’t generally the most helpful around the house she’s taken to other chores with much enthusiasm. like collecting the eggs and letting the layers out in the morning, and tonight she put them away in the evening too. and after about 20 minutes of instruction with dad she has learned to ride her bike without training wheels, which she now spends much time doing. many, many laps around the big circular driveway.

olivia is my helper extraordinaire. overly helpful sometimes. but much appreciated help mostly. always the first to volunteer to help with dishes, laundry or baby. if only she and hannah could come to a truce. they spend more time battling then playing these days.

and hannah, sweet hannah. it’s hard to still not see her as “the baby”, she was for so long it seemed. but she’s getting so big. and she is a force to be reckoned with. all unbelievable cuteness one minute and all volatile, tantruming 3 year old the next. and she’s funny. and she knows it. a seriously well developed sense of humour for a not quite 3 yr old.

sidney and olivia are in the middle of their summer session of swimming lessons. every day for two weeks ( not weekends ) and as much as having to go and sit in the hotter then the surface of the sun pool area for an hour every single day for two weeks, with a sweaty little baby sucks really a whole bunch, it’s going great. they are definitely learning so much more when they go every day then once a week. and on friday as a break from the same drills, the older class played a game with balls and goals, and my clumsy sidney was surprisingly adept at getting the ball and throwing the ball and participated 100%. dad and i were both impressed. and olivia, who spent the first 10 minutes of her first class refusing to go in, and then sitting in the corner of the pool giving me her very best stink eye, is now diving for rings and mastering her floats ( front and back )

i keep waiting for nice weather, for you know…..summer to start…..so we can head to the cottage or my dad’s place and they can do some actual swimming in an actual body of water……but sigh…..it just isn’t coming. i really hope august is nice. i plan to head up to the cottage next week anyway, if my uncle is still there so we can have some boat rides.

and molly is a baby. i dislike when people ask if she’s a “good baby” because it seems to insinuate that there is a “bad baby” . babies are babies. they’re good when they’re sleeping and when they’re awake and even when they’re fussy and will only stop crying if you walk them. none of that standing still and rocking them either, but actual walking around, because there is clearly some difference between the two that only a baby can detect. but her fussy times are few and far between and she sleeps a lot and for good blocks of time at night, so really she is about as easy a baby as you can hope for. that’s a better distinction i think. easy or hard baby?

she’s already loving to look at her sisters, and half smiling and making little baby talking noises. it’s already slipping away. but please don’t take those type pf comments for any kind of uncertainty. no matter how sad i am that this is the last little baby face i’ll look down at, asleep on my chest, little tiny mouth open, so relaxed, you couldn’t pay me enough to be pregnant again. or to fill my basement yet again with baby stuff. stored away again for more years. or to add another few years onto the time it is before ryan and i might again get to go out alone. there are as many things i’m looking forward to as i am sad to see for the last time.

and there it is, the big update. probably won’t be another one for weeks. especially if summer actually starts.

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.