Elisa’s Day

if i had known caitlin would tag me to reveal ten things, i may have saved my little admission about my love of action movies….. . but i think i managed to come up with ten more.

1. I hate to cut grass, as a child it was my most hated chore. Ryan and I have an arrangement. I never cut the grass, he doesn’t even know how to work the washer and dryer.

2. I am a big sci-fi fan. I believe in aliens. Not little green men probing rural farmers aliens, but I believe that we couldn’t possibly be alone in the universe.

3. I love fashion. When I was young I wanted to be a fashion designer. I’ve been watching fashion television since I was 12. In grade 8, as part of the enrichment program at my school I got to go to Toronto with the enrichment teacher, to take a tour of Flare magazine and meet the fashion editor. Now I feed it by watching things like What Not To Wear, Project Runway, and Say Yes To The Dress.

4. Related to that I also designed, and choose the fabric for my wedding dress, which my mom sewed ( the downfall of my above mentioned dream was that i love fashion, but i learned, hate to sew )

5. I am an adult child of divorce. I was 19 when my parents divorced, people often think that makes it easier. It does not.

6. When I was 16, I moved 3 hours away to live with my grandmother on my mom’s side. I lived with her until I was 18 and then got my own place.

7. Parenting four kids is my biggest challenge every single day. Sure it’s easy to have four kids, but being a good parent to them is anything but easy.

8. I love to shop. Not in a spend lots of money, come home laden with bags type way. I just love to browse. I could spend an entire day wandering a mall and not buy anything, and it’s not just malls. I love auctions, yard sales, flea markets, and little down towns with cool stores. I love finding the perfect thing or the great deal. My favorite person to shop with is my mom.

9. I haven’t had a drink in eight years. I stopped drinking when i got pregnant with sidney and just never bothered to again. I don’t know why, it’s not a committed “i will not drink” type thing, but i guess, for me, it’s something i don’t feel really meshes with the 24 hour commitment of parenting small children. I expect as the kids get older i’ll be likely to have the odd beer or glass of wine.

10. I love peaches, but hate all things peach flavored

like ryan, pretty much all the blogs i read regularly have already done this so i guess it stops here.

how about a post that isn’t about who’s sick this week ( though for the record it’s no one….yay )

over the holidays i watched die hard, in fragments. it seemed like every time i turned the tv on ( and that’s a lot when i’m nursing, i just prefer to have a quiet moment in front of the tv then to try and nurse amongst the chaos of my other children and the baby is getting to old to juggle a book over because she’s all, hey milk lady, what is that thing? let me take a look while you spray milk ALL OVER THE PLACE and then let me wrench myself off your nipple every 3 seconds to check back and see if that thing is still there…… because that isn’t annoying at all…….) die hard was playing on one channel or another. so i watched it, probably in it’s entirety, but in random bits and pieces.

anyway……it got me thinking about movies, i love movies of pretty much any kind. it was just recently that i finally admitted to myself though, if i had to pick an overall favorite genre, it’s the good ol’ action movie. i love a good old fashioned, blockbuster, action movie. action/sci-fi….even better. i mean, i love a good documentary and critically acclaimed movies….sure, but it’s action movies that are my true favorite.

and i started thinking about the small group of movies that i will watch anytime they are on tv. for whatever reason, even though i have seen them all countless times, i’ll watch them again. i mean, sure, your choices can be limited when your up at 4 am looking for something to watch with baby…….but that isn’t even it, i will just watch them again, and again. they aren’t even necessarily my favorite movies, if i had to make a list of favorites it would be different ( though some would over lap ) but i guess just because it’s a favorite movie doesn’t mean i’d watch it time and time again like these ones.

any of the die hard movies. i heart jon maclean (and bruce willis for that matter)

any of the star trek tng movies, including the first, made for tv, one with kirk in it

independence day.  i also heart will smith

the day after tomorrow

the matrix ( i don’t need to clarify which one, because anyone with half a brain knows there was only ONE matrix movie and any thing coming after, that may have almost ruined it completely with it’s unbelievable terribleness, well it just doesn’t even exist now does it )

any of the xmen movies

there are undoubtedly others that would make the list given the opportunity, but these are the ones that seem to play almost constantly on tv for whatever reasons and so i know for sure i will literally watch them over and over.

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.