Busy busy busy!

I realized a couple of days ago how busy life has become when I uploaded something like 150 photos at once. And it wasn't because we had taken a bunch of pictures all at once, it was a couple weeks' worth of pictures that I hadn't downloaded to the laptop to be able to upload to Flickr. So... what's keeping us so busy?!

Well, Trevor's back at work, for one. So that means that I'm on my own with both kids most of the time now. No more sleeping in for me... It's like being back to work! If I want to take a shower, I have to set an alarm!! Actually, I try to get up after Trevor's brushed his teeth and is on his way to work. I'm pretty lucky, the kids both like to sleep in or be lazy in the morning (perhaps they get that from their mother...). With this gorgeous weather, we've spent a lot of time outside. We go to the one of the parks in the area pretty much every day, so I get a little bit of exercise pushing the stroller there and back as well as running after Christine and lifting her onto the play structures. We've also done a little bit of much needed yard work last weekend, so it's starting to look more and more like spring/summer out there! We've also gone to the library once or twice, and to the Early Years Center for some playgroup time. We recently became members at the YMCA, so have gone there a couple of times (I joined the >60 crowd for an AquaFit class last week while Nicholas was at playcare and yoga today with both of them at playcare). On top of that, during naps, I've managed to piece together a baby quilt for Nicholas as he didn't have anything to really call his own yet. On the weekends, we've kept busy as well, with a return trip to the sugar bush and play dates at the park. Christine has been absolutely whipped with all the exercise and fresh air!! I wish the weather would stay like this all summer vs. getting so much hotter and humid... I have a feeling Nicholas will like heat about as much as I do...

Christine goes to daycare a couple of days a week (Wednesdays and Fridays), so Nicholas and I get a little bit more time together those days. Unfortunately for him, we've been doing a lot of our errands those days, so he spends quite a bit of time in his car seat. He doesn't seem to mind though - he's pretty portable! We go to Baby Talk at the Health Unit every Wednesday morning to hang out with other moms and babies and get him weighed and measured. He's growing way too quickly... he's already almost 25" long and weighs 13 lbs 10.5 oz... sigh... We also try to do laundry and get groceries on Fridays so that we don't have to do that during the weekend. We'll see how long I can keep that up with him.

We have a long list of things we'd like to do around the house this summer, starting (hopefully next week) with getting our downstairs bathroom redone. When that is under way, I'll post. We're also hoping to get a play structure for the backyard so that we can play in the backyard as well, maybe build a new deck (at least a new surface), fix our awning, maybe put in a few new windows downstairs, fix or replace our shed... the list goes on... I don't know how things will be prioritized as we probably can't afford to do all that during my maternity leave... It's a good thing I took out my stock before the leave!! It'll certainly get put to good use.

Anyway, that's it for now. I actually got to write this post all in one sitting! I'm surprised...

1st Post-Pregnancy "Run"

Despite the pretty crappy weather, I made out for my first "run" today. It's in quotes as it wasn't much of a run, more of a slow jog. It felt good though. My lungs weren't in as bad a shape as I thought they would be. Hopefully my incision won't be too sore later today - we'll see.

Anyway, after feeding Nicholas (2 goals: 1) he can be left behind and b) less weight=less pain), I headed out for what I thought was about 2 km. When I was about 3/4 of the way through the loop and looked at my watch and saw 16 minutes something, I thought "this better be more than 2 km cause I don't think I'm going THAT slow...". As it turns out, it's just shy of 2 miles, so a bit over 3 km. I felt better - I thought I was going about 10 min/mile, so I was right where wanted. In time, I'll get that down. I just feel good about getting out.

As a reward, I just ate a dates square and 3 pieces of chocolate. Mmmmmm!!!

Flickr gets Video!!!

As Kevin has already indicated on his blog, Flickr gets video! We're so excited to be able to share our videos with family and friends! Hurray!!

I'm currently uploading a few of the latest videos we've taken of Christine and Nicholas (from December on) and there's even one of Liam. Now that we have a way to share video and a camera that takes pretty good video, we'll be taking lots more, so watch out!

Just wanted to let you know to go looking for those videos! Happy viewing!

And Finally, a Baby Update

I thought it might be time to give a bit of an update on Nicholas...

He's now 5 weeks old and continuing to grow like a weed. To mark his 5th week birthday, he finally dropped the umbilical cord - I don't know what it is about my kids, but they like to hold on to that little stub FOREVER!!! He now weighs 12 lbs 1 oz and is 23-3/4" long. Quite a boy. We figure he'll be signing up for college football in the fall!

He continues to be a pretty perfect baby, eating every couple hours during the day and waking at night at 3 to 5 hour intervals (I really like the 5 hr stretches...). Other than that, he's a pretty happy baby as long as he's got a clean diaper, is fed and isn't over tired (he can get cranky at 8pm if he's been awake since 4). He still sleeps a lot through the day, but is usually awake from 8:30-11am and 5-9pm. So both kids are still napping at the same time which is really nice.

In other news... Something's wrong when you put laundry on the line and do some gardening and there's still mounds of snow on the ground! Oh well - I love spring!!!

Digging up the past

In the spirit of digging up the past (following Kevin's lead), I dug up a dress my mom had kept that I wore when I was 3. This is a special dress as my grandmother had made it for me. And yesterday, Christine got to wear it too! It's a bit big on her still, and my mom didn't keep the cute puffy blouse that I wore underneath it, so it doesn't look quite as cute, but she'll grow into it, and maybe I'll find a better blouse for underneath at some point.

As embarrassing as this is... I'll post it anyway (thanks mom for the "great" haircut!!). Here's a picture of me in my "bout d'choux" class - some form of preschool for the class just before j-K at the time and one of just me in the corner.


And here's a picture of Christine:


Unfortunately, she's quite sick these days - runny nose, cough & fever. We hope she'll recover from that very soon and not pass it on to Nicholas (or Trev and I).

The Princess Sleeps Here

Many of you know that we've been working on Christine's transition to her new bedroom and new bed for quite some time (we "gave" her her new room for her birthday, Dec 23rd). She took to being in the new room in about a week or two, but sleeping in her bed was another matter altogether. She would be happy to lay there with us to read books and sing songs (with me, not Trevor, of course) and say good night. We would barely make it to the bottom of the stairs after saying our good nights that she would be crawling out of bed, turning on her music and laying in the doorway, right in front of the baby gate we had at the door. It was a rare occasion when she would cry. She was typically very happy to just lay there talking and singing to herself until she decided to fall asleep - on the floor.

After a couple of weeks of this, while trying everything under the sun to get her to like her new bed more (tried different teddy bears, all sorts of arrangements of so many pillows, with a bedrail and without, with and without a box spring, etc.), we just decided that it was ok that she sleep on the floor. While we won the battle of not sleeping in the crib, she won the battle of sleeping on the floor. I did start putting her back in her bed when I went to bed. For about a week or so, we'd still find her on the floor in the morning, but then she started to spend the rest of the night in bed. This went on for about 3 months...

About 2 weeks ago, Christine stayed in her bed from the moment we put her in until the morning when we went to get her. We celebrated! Then, it happened again, and again, and again... In the last 2 weeks, there was only one night when I had to put her back in bed - at least at night time. Her naps are still about 70-30 bed to floor, but that too will come.

What made the difference? Who knows... Perhaps she's now accepted and is happy that someone else is using her crib. Perhaps it's having her own babies with her in bed. Perhaps it's the new little fairy pillow that she got from ma tante Pierrette. With all the stuff in there, it must be way less comfortable than when we first started... perhaps that was the problem... :)

Sugar Bushing at Edgewood Farms

Shortly after our hour without power, we talked with the Durepos to see if they wanted to go to the sugar shack on Sunday morning. During Easter dinner, we had talked about going, and the weather was supposed to be quite nice on Sunday, so we thought it would be a good idea. The plan was then defined as heading up to Frankville to go to Gibbons Farms for around 11am. This was after talking with Gilles...

Then Sunday morning, around 9am came along, and we now talk with Tara! Well, the plan is now to go NOW, and not to go to Gibbons Farms at all, but to go to another place that is closer and offers the full pancake breakfast. A much better plan, really, but it means rushing out of the door. We run around and get the kids fed and dressed and we head out to meet the Durepos (actually, it's Gilles, Tara and Jacob as well as Tara's parents, David and Peggy, as well as two of her sisters, Lara and Saryn). Eventually, everyone's ready and we leave. After a quick stop at the drive through bank machine for the Durepos, we get to our final destination, right around 11am. Let me mention that we were at the their house by about 9:30 or 9:45... :)

Anyway, once we get there, I'm about to faint, I'm so hungry. It was well worth the wait though - the pancakes were thick and fluffy and completely covered in maple syrop. Mmmmmmm.... Christine enjoyed them as well, but definitely not as much as she enjoyed the taffy later!

After a delicious meal, we went outside to see the animals. There were lots of cows and horses. I'm not sure if this is something Trevor asked Christine or if she came up with this on her own, but she kept saying that the cows and horses needed a bath! After a while of walking around, we decided that it was time for the taffy, so the boys went to figure out where we had to go for it. It turns out they are not allowed to pour the taffy on snow outside (Health Ministry rules...), so they have to make their own snow and pour it on it, inside! Oh well... So Trev came back with a stick for me and a stick for Christine. She loved it! See the pictures on flickr (you'll need to be a contact to see them, so tell me what your yahoo account is and I'll add you if you're not already on there).

While we were still just walking around and enjoying our taffy, this man showed up with a couple of copper rods in his hands. They were "divination rods" - used to find dead corpses or something underground. Well, he asked for a volunteer to lay on the ground to make a demonstration. Gilles quickly jumped at the opportunity. He laid on the snow, face up. The man then walked towards Gilles with the sticks straight out, parallel to the ground. When the sticks were above Gilles, they crossed (X marks the spot). Then Peggy tried with the sticks and it did the same thing again! Turns out, if you lay face down, nothing happens... the sticks stay straight out... So we played with those for quite a while, even trying to get the kids to lay down for us to "find" them. It was fun.

After a while of talking with this man and looking at the buckets of ice on the trees, we decided to go for a wagon ride. They said it was too slippery for the horses, so it would be pulled by a tractor. Jacob and Christine enjoyed that just as much if not more than if it had been horses pulling us. Along the tour, we saw tons of trees that were tapped, most of them were tied to lines, but quite a few had the buckets attached, so someone's doing a lot of hard work there!

Finally, it was probably about 2pm when all this was done, so much past Christine's naptime. We were heading towards the car when Nicholas decided that he wanted to eat, and wanted to eat now. So after a stop for that and more exploring of the cows that need a bath for Christine and Papa, we headed home. Christine was exhausted and fell asleep in less than 5 minutes of being on the road. Unfortunately though, the 10 minutes of sleep she got in the car were enough for her for the day! When we got home, there was no way she was continuing that nap!

So we went for a walk to the park and played on the swings and slides for a while. We all had a great day!

The Hour Without Power

By the lights that were on at our most of our neighbor's houses, we believe we are the only ones on the block that turned the lights out for Earth Hour, but we feel good about the little bit that we did. We should probably do that more often, actually.

A couple of days prior to the big event - I believe it was Wednesday - I was in the car with Nicholas and they were talking about Earth Hour / Hour without power that would be taking place on Saturday night. It was actually funny because they were basically advertising the music they would be playing during that hour. I thought to myself: if you turn the lights out, shouldn't you turn off the stereo too? And then they answered my question - they recommended getting your walkman out (does anyone still have one of those?!) or anything battery powered to be able to listen to them. Then I thought to myself: is using battery power really much better than using electricity? Come on! It takes a lot of processing (thus electricity) to make those batteries, then you have to ship them to all the distribution centers, case pick them to go to the appropriate store distribution centers, then finally to the stores where they'll be shelved and people will get in their cars to go buy them... And that's got nothing to do with the poisonous disposal of those batteries! Anyway, I digress...

So we did turn off all the lights in our house. We did not turn on the tv or stereo. We certainly didn't try to find a walkman to listen to music. Trev even turned off the laptop!!! We just lit a few candles on the mantle and had some very quiet time. By the end of the hour, I was freezing - it's then that I realized that Trev hadn't only turned off the fan for the furnace during the non-heating periods, but had turned down the temperature to 16C...

Christine had been in bed for almost an hour before we turned out the lights, so she didn't know the difference. Nicholas seemed to enjoy looking at the light given off by the candles, but really, he didn't know the difference. By the end of the hour, he and I were dozing off, so we had a nice nap on the couch until almost 10pm when we decided to go upstairs to bed.

All in all, a nice and relaxing hour. Like I said, I think we need to do that more often. Perhaps the real challenge for us would be to do it earlier in the day when we actually have more needs for electricity and all the conveniences it provides us.