Jul 16

in a few short days we’re off to stay at my dad’s for a whole week ( well, almost, 6 days which is long enough ) and i have spent this whole week, trying to plan and mostly dreading getting ready for that. today when he’s done work, my dad is going to stop by and pick up a bunch of stuff that i wouldn’t have room for in my van, so i have to have that all ready today. and i have two more loads of laundry before we can start packing clothes. packing for many children, including a baby for 6 days, not fun stuff. but hey, art camp, pretty fun stuff. up first, picasso pizzaz. and hannah and the baby and i will just have to amuse ourselves sitting on the beach, shopping and even possibly a trip to the local early years center.

poor ryan is on his own. well, him and the cats. that’s right. cats. i adopted some cats off kijiji. we were having some rodent issues. now we have cat issues. but man the kids are excited. one is questionable. i think the women may have mislead me there. she seems nervous, possibly blind. but the other one is perfect. laid back, loves all the attention the kids can give her, a generally cool cat. they came as a set, so we’ll see if the nervous one settles in or not. in other cat related news, molly loves to chase them around. she’s a crawling master now thanks to the cats. and ryan swears she says kitty. which i guess makes up for the fact that no matter how often i vacuum she now always has copious amounts of cat hair stuck to her sweaty little baby palms and in her little baby pigs.

thunderstorm warnings, with possible hail. i really hope it’s not going to happen ( though it’s looking pretty ominous right now ) because i would hate for hail to pummel the garden, it’s going so well. though it looks like the beans are going to be ready to start picking while i’m gone of course!! few things i love more then fresh beans. ( maybe fresh corn….. ) we had the first “new” potatoes the other day too. delish. always so exciting to eat food you grew. really it’s unfortunate that more people don’t/won’t experience that feeling.

okay, off the computer, on to laundry and packing.

Jul 2

well hopefully we’re done with sickness for awhile. olivia just finished her second round of Rx in a month, as did sidney ( olivia did in fact have a nasty ear infection, and surprise, sidney had tonsillitis ) in light of these two facts, we wrapped up our school year a few days early. i mean, don’t get me started on the absurdity of making the kids go right until the 30th even though marks for report cards go in the second week of june. so with both kids sick again last weekend, i decided to call it a year and told the school as much. and so, with that, our summer begins. thank goodness. looking forward to some sleeping in and some lack of schedule.

busy weekend last weekend, ryan’s mom was here and it was another rainy day at the market. so when my usual veggie guy pleaded with me to take some strawberries off his hands because he was never going to get rid of them in the rain, what could i do? $10 later i have a flat of strawberries ( that he continued to pour pints on top of as i picked veggies ) that i need to do something with. normally i only make raspberry jam, i’m not a big fan of strawberry, but the kids like it, so i kinda thought i might make some anyway. so we did. lots of jam, and one delicious strawberry pie. then sunday we blew through our egg surplus with a ridiculously huge pound cake recipe ( it takes 24 eggs ) and muffins and cookies. at least it solved my end of year gift dilemma for the kids teachers. so wednesday i dropped by the school to grab any last bits of stuff ( and report cards ) and drop off a pound cake for the office, and mini pound cakes plus jam for the teachers.

we had some birthdays too. someone turned one, which is hard to believe.

and finally started crawling, which means i can’t turn my back on her for a second or she’s into the kids book shelf, trying to stick her finger in a light socket, chewing on the kids dirty shoes……general ‘baby on the go’ mischief. i’m definitely in that same bittersweet place i’m sure all mom’s go with the last baby, glad it’s all coming to an end but sad to see it go. i’m finding myself very undedicated to trying to get her on bottles, i am both so ready to be done nursing and so aware this is my last time. even when i felt like maybe we wouldn’t have more before, i always knew there was a [good]chance we’d have more. but with this, the very last baby, it’s so much harder to let that go, even though i want to. and there has been sleeping through the night. which i hope means sooner then later i can split the girls back up two and two, because if i have to listen to hannah and the older girls spend many more early mornings arguing in bed, i may just loose my shit. don’t ask how i plan to split them i haven’t decided yet. the obvious, older two, younger two maybe, but  maybe i mix it up a little too? who knows.

and someone turned six. also hard to believe.

our traditional birthday pancakes, which you get on your actual birthday since you get a cake at your party and two cakes was too many. olivia decided to ask for money for her birthday this year, because she really wanted to take gymnastics, and the only money in our budget for extra curricular right now goes to swimming lessons ( no body needs to know how to walk a balance beam to save their own life so….. ) so that is what she got from all the grandparents and aunties. and she is very excitedly waiting for the fall session to start up now. my mom also gave her a leotard to wear ( which she desperately wanted as well ) and a new book, that she estimates to be about a 4th grade reading level ( based on the vocabulary ) that olivia is already half way through. i am definitely glad she’s in the french, i could see her being much less challenged in a regular class.

and this weekend, i think we’ll have to forgo any going away to spend the entire weekend trying to catch up on all the outside stuff we fell behind on due to the last three weeks of rain. i heard this was the most rain to ever fall in june. and i’d believe it if all the standing water everywhere is any gauge. i just really hope that our garlic and potatoes don’t get rot.

well, one more coffe and then time to get moving. my step dad is away and so his morning chores fall to me, which means there are birds waiting for me to start their day.

my final thought today is, you know the only good part about having to wake a baby up from a nap? getting to snap the elusive ‘cute sleeping baby’ photo without any concern that it might wake them up.