Elisa’s Day

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.