Elisa’s Day

miss molly had me up at 5am this morning. but since that was the first time she had me since going to bed around 10 last night, i’ll take it !! man. there are no words that can describe with any justice how good it feels to get a solid 7 hours sleep. lets leave it at that.

so here i sit, house quiet, kids still in bed, drinking my coffee, staring out the window behind the laptop. reminds me of last spring. baby wasn’t here yet, ryan and i were sharing the van, and on days i needed to have it, i’d get up at 5 and drive him to work ( before you call social services, don’t forget grandma and grandpa are here too, nice that there is pretty much always someone in the house for just such occasions ). those mornings were so much nicer then the rushed mornings when my alarm goes off at 630 and it’s straight into the morning routine. though clearly, not nice enough for me to just set my alarm earlier and get up earlier every day …….haha……

the calm is nice. because the rest of my days are feeling a little…..well, insane. it’s just that time of year. so much to do outside,  on top of the so much there always is to do inside. it’s hard to keep on top of it all. today i definitely have to do a big clean, since we have ryan’s mom and stepdad coming for the long weekend. there going to help out, ryan’s mom will be helping us get the garden in and his stepdad will be doing some odd jobs. and the last week or so, since the weather turned nice again, we have just been outside every free second, in the flower gardens, and keeping on top of the berrys we planted last fall so they don’t get choked out by grass….add in the odd play date and that’s it. something had to give. the house is the only logical thing. someday, my kids will be older and my house will be clean again. this is what i keep telling myself anyway.

hannah went with a friend to his gymnastics class this week. it’s a ploy, “bring a friend day” obviously, to get new kids signed up. and it may have worked for us. hannah just really loved it a lot. and we stopped doing kindergym a couple years ago because it was just too expensive to have three kids signed up all the time. but i could put just hannah in the last 6 weeks of class for a pretty decent price. of course the other girls will be upset. but ryan pointed out that they are going to art classes this summer, and hannah is not ( too young ) so maybe that evens things out. maybe also, it just can’t always be all fair all across the board. i think i will sign her up.

the art classes…..so excited. one of the employees at the early years center, heard me talking about staying at my dad’s on the march break and started talking about how much she loved it up there. how every summer she would rent a cottage and sign her kids up for these amazing art classes put on by the art college up there. the classes took up the morning and then then afternoon was spent on the beach. and i thought to myself, well that does sound pretty awesome. so i asked me dad to get me a brochure and found two classes i wanted to sign them up for. he even offered to pick up the tab for one, which was great (even though the prices were really very good too ) so it’s all set. in july we’ll be staying for 4 days and they’ll be taking “picasso pizazz” and in august it’s “pottery for kids” which, wow, how fun is that going to be? i thought about taking a pottery class too, but alas, they had no adult beginner classes. and the age group is 5-7 so they go in the same class which is nice for them, some sister fun time. and the littler girls and i will chill at grandpa’s on the beach for the am and the older girls have all afternoon on the beach as well. i am really looking forward to it ( though we will all miss ryan )

well, both older girls have wandered down, looking for breakfast, so i guess i better get moving, so i can get them off to school……. lots to do today.

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.

lots of black coffee and home made brownies. so good.

3 kids are playing a board game together and the smallest worden girl is pounding out her little baby heart on the piano. it’s a little melissa and doug mini piano. it’s a big hit with the nine month old set as i remember from my niece’s visit last summer, and molly agrees.

it’s been cold here the last few days, which sucks. but apparently it’s going to be very warm by next weekend so i’m holding out hope. ashley posted a picture of a tulip, it’s been too yucky to go on a search for green here, but i wonder if we did, would we find any? from the window it’s a sea of dreary brown.

had some friends from the city here yesterday for a visit which was awesome. although i did feel a little like all we did all day was eat. they brought lunch and then there was the above mentioned brownies. and grandma’s spaghetti sauce with homemade french stick. and apple pie. so good. and i sent them home with some homemade raspberry jam. because once you’ve tried homemade i don’t think you can ever eat weird gelatinous store jam ever again. the girls had a blast with their three little dogs. three of the best behaved little dogs i have ever met i might add. my grandma was also here, at my mom’s, with her new little dog. plus my mom’s dog. for a brief moment in time the dogs outnumbered the children.

molly did not go down for her regular afternoon nap though in all the excitement, which is probably why she woke up at 2:30 am all bright eyes and “da da da”s. never a good sign when that happens. good thing i always have some movies pvr’d for just such and occasion. nothing like being up for a couple hours in the middle of the night.

nothing exciting on tap for today. some cleaning up, maybe i’ll pull out the easter stuff. i can’t believe easter is already next weekend.

ryan and i have a huge cleaning and organizing job to do in the basement this spring, during which i hope hannah’s missing birth certificate turns up. though i am not holding my breath at this point, you never know.

march break is upon us, so far so good. some quiet days at home before we head off to my dad’s place to stay in his cottage ( which sits about 20 feet from his house….long story ) i hope the nice weather holds out.

ryan and i have been teaching the girls how to play cards. it started with family game nights and qwirkle, which i mentioned a few posts back. but qwirkle is a bit advanced still for olivia. sometimes we forget olivia is only five. because she tries ( and succeeds most times ) so hard to keep up with sidney that we tend to lump them in together. and sometimes 21 months makes no difference ( like the fact they both read at the same level, in fact, olivia is probably a better reader then sidney at this point ) but sometimes it makes all the difference. she understands the game well enough, she just doesn’t quite have the attention span for it yet. anyway……i’m wandering away from topic here.

so we got talking about all the games we used to play as kids. for both of us it was a lot. i remember spending so much time playing games with my cousin as kids, so many games. you know, the old days, before there were video games, and when cartoons only played on tv on saturday mornings, there were games. and since we’re kinda running our house like it’s 1984 what with the no video games or computer time and minimal tv, well we need to fill our time, so a quick google for the rules of crazy eights ( because neither of us could remember ) and we were off and running. and the very best part, they can play each other. so got 10 minutes to fill? lets play crazy eights.

love it.

then rummy. they picked it up pretty quickly too, olivia is actually a bit of a card shark. even hannah is learning her suits, often we play “teams” so that hannah is on someone’s team and can hold some cards and throw cards.

we had some friends over and got talking about the same thing, and it ended with some more idea’s of old games i want to get and with us having to haul out the ol’ fireball island to show them since neither of them had heard of it. and then of course the girls wanted to play. so there was some very very exciting games of that. now the quest for more games is on.

of the top of my head i remember spending hours with daniel ( my cousin, oh hi collinses who read my blog ) playing ( fireball island aside since it’s already mentioned and in play ) cards, so many cards, yatzee, backgammon, clue, scotland yard, and crokinole, which i had forgotten about until above mentioned friends reminded me of it’s existence ( it was at my grandma’s house, a big old wooden one, our main toys there, that, a metal doll house and tons of those porcelain animals you got with your tea )

and for whatever reason, seeing sidney and olivia sitting playing a few hands of cards together is extremely satisfying. and reminds me that they are all getting older so quickly. i kind of still think of hannah as my baby, maybe just because the gap between her and molly was the longest. but clearly that isn’t the case.

lets just see if i can bang out an update while the kids are playing outside and the baby is sleeping. that’s right……playing outside because it is beautiful and spring like out there. it’s going outside with no hat and mitts weather out there. it’s the sun actually feels warm weather out there. it’s a beautiful thing. i mean sure, the kids play outside in the winter too. but there is only so much fun to be had with the mobility of the michelin tire man. and it’s always a race against the clock, how long can you play before your numb fingers, toes and nose force you back inside? on a good day it might be 45 min, but more often then not it’s about 20 minutes. so it is a happy day when i can kick the kids outside sans hats and mitts and they’ll stay out there a good hour or so.

last week was a crazy one. i was on the go all week. which means my house is trashed in a serious way. i can generally keep on top of the mess (to a reasonable extent anyway) but if too many other plans start creeping into the picture, well, something has to give. so mess was left. laundry was not done. it all spirals out of control pretty quickly believe me. so today was spent cleaning. though sadly, not much laundry has been done yet, but i still have the afternoon.

and now i hear my baby crying, so off i go to get her, feed her etc. and will have to finish this later

okay, two hours later. baby is playing on the floor with the kids. roast is in the oven. ryan made our very first successful pie for dessert. we have both tried pie crust before and it always ended badly. but he did it !! yay. also the house is reasonably clean again and we even made bread. a productive day.

yesterday we spent the day in peterborough shopping. my grandma was nice enough to escort us to costco ( membership required ) and we even got to leave the kids with my cousins so we could shop in peace. i have had to start shopping at costco. it’s kind of annoying to drive to peterborough to do it, but the kids are getting bigger, they eat a lot and there is still one more to add to the collective appetite. imagine you buy on bunch of banana’s and then you doll them out three ( soon to be four ) at a time ( let alone if you want one ) well, one bunch doesn’t go too far. i need the giant bag of grapefruit. the giant bag of oranges. the huge box of granola. the 44 pounds of flour. the six pack of whole wheat spaghetti, because everyone here loves spaghetti and one box of noodles is barely enough. if we want leftovers i need to make a box and a half. you get the point. ryan says our basement is starting to look like a bomb shelter with all the overflow storage in addition to the home canned goods. what i really need now is a second fridge for the basement. ryan has a little bar fridge down there that is packed, but i’m going to start watching the classifieds for one. and i definitely can’t wait to get some new egg layers in the spring. ( or sooner ) we go through 2-3 dozen eggs a week. we’re also getting a freezer pack of local beef from a guy up the road to go in the deep freeze with our chickens this year.

not much else going on. another round of swimming lessons over with. and a few extra weeks in between this time, as the pool closes for some much needed renovations.

other then that, march break, no real plans, but we’ll head up to my dad’s for a few days just to get out of the house. i’m working on ryan’s sweater. it’s coming slowly, but coming along all the same. i finally got around to reading the Lost Symbol. it was fine. a more formulistic writer there may not be, but entertaining all the same. then my mom brought over Year of the Flood. i’m just trying to decide of i should read Oryx and Crake again first. i also have a few easy patterns and some fabric i picked up for next to nothing at our fabricland, soon to be closed. i’ll give sewing another try and see how it goes. i’d like to be able to make things for the girls.

and there you have it, the mundane minutiae of my life, but now my baby wants me and i need to switch the laundry.

a few random things i have been meaning to talk about floating around in my head, i could do a small update for each one, but’s lets go with a scatted, random, longer one instead. but hey, ryan fixed my admin so i can upload pictures, so at least now there will be cute baby( or big kid ) pictures along with the rambling updates.

lets start with the most inane. you already know i love tv, but i especially love crime drama. so anyway, i watch criminal minds. and a couple seasons back they replaced a character. and the new guy was fine. never bothered me one way or the other (though i liked the old character better ). then a couple weeks ago ryan and i watched a special about the simpsons. and during that special i learned that the actor who plays said character also voices fat tony. and NOW all i ever hear while watching criminal minds when he talks is FAT TONY FAT TONY FAT TONY. i NEVER heard it before. now it’s all i hear. not only am i boggled by the fact that it seems so obvious now but that i never noticed before, but i find it distracts from the show when all i hear is fat tony.

sidney had to take something to school today for their valentines party. there was a schedule sent home at the beginning of the year, and we were scheduled for the end of yr party. yesterday she came home telling us that one girl scheduled for valetines day is absent so sidney’s been switched. which, whatever, honestly i could whip up cookies or cupcakes from scratch, no problem, even on that short of notice. what is so !#$%@ annoying is that the school board policy as of this year is “any snack sent to school to be shared with classmates MUST be bought” …….seriously…….because you know, it’s all this bullshit health board regulations and general fear mongering about baked goods and the general public. so you can’t provide anything to the general public that wasn’t prepared in a health board approved kitchen anymore. i’m not sure exactly what kind of evil i’d be spreading with my home made cupcakes, maybe they came in contact with nuts, or i prepared them on a salmonella covered counter or something. because i’m clearly an incompetent moron, as is anyone offering homemade baked goods ( uh, just seems not likely to me ) so instead, i had to get in my car, drive 20 minutes, spend $10 on some chemical heavy, probably don’t even taste good, valentines cookies from the grocery store. it’s nice to know that chemicals and preservatives are considered a better alternative then anything homemade.

as expected my good sleeper was replaced by a not good sleeper around 4 months of age. and it’s been a rough go ever since. i just really can’t get up every 1.5 hours. maybe, if i she was my first baby and i could dedicate all of my energy to her, if i didn’t have three other children that require my attention. i find it very interesting to see the difference between parenting one or two kids and parenting more then three. the luxuries afforded a parent of a single child as far as time and focus are pretty staggering. i know we made the conscious choice to sacrifice some of that for a large family. and i’d do it again. but i’m off topic already. i just can’t get up every 1.5 hours. it is not an option. and since sleep training at this age is also not an option, i was definitely delving into desperation. then my parenting magazine that my MIL always gets me from the kids magazine drive came. it was the yearly “sleep issue” and although it didn’t hold any main articles that held any information i didn’t already know, in an article about the newest fad “sleep doulas” i read one small paragraph about the possible downsides of nursing to sleep. now i nursed all my other babies to sleep all the time. maybe it caused issue, but never issue enough  for me to really notice so…….but every baby is different, and this fell into my “acceptable to try” category ( along with sleeping in bed with us, different sleeping positions in her crib and cereal before bed, which yes, i know is a myth, but hey, remember the desperate part? not a lot of options to even try at 7 months ) so we started nursing at wake up and then a couple hours later in a wakeful environment  ( no more dark quiet nursing ) and then when it’s time i rock her to sleep instead. it has made a shocking difference right away. crazy. a couple night she even slept through the entire night. but most nights she now wakes once  which is a huge improvement on 4 or 5 times ( obviously in the night we still nurse to sleep, it seems to be different for whatever reason, maybe because she isn’t really even awake ). and for several days now, when she is ready for her morning nap i have laid her down in her crib and she goes quietly to sleep all on her own. i only discovered this when i put her down to do the girls hair the other morning before they left for school and she had quietly fell asleep by the time i finished. it only works for the morning nap for some reason, but whatever. best breakthrough ever. seriously.

and now, my favorite sleeper, almost to small for the big giant baby. heart bum.

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.