T makes his entrance

Well, it's been a few weeks since I last posted, and they have certainly been evenful. Little T, baby boy made his entrance a week before my scheduled c-section. It seems to be my fate to have wonderful easy pregnancies and nightmare deliveries.

It was not fun, let's leave it at that. And T ended up spending a week in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) as a result of how not fun it was. I am trying to focus on not being angry at being sidelined for 10 hours when I went in expecting to be taken straight in for a section.

He is beautiful and wonderful and we have been home for a week so we are completely sleep deprived and humourless at this point. M is handling his arrival very well, although she is not thrilled with the fact that she can't play with him, and she is acting up a bit (which began when Mummy was away in the hospital for a whole week, she has never been without me for more than a couple of hours, so it's understandable) but on the whole she is quite gentle with him and loving.

In other horror stories, the "Cons" got elected again. Which is horrific, but frankly what do we deserve with the lowest voter turnout since the 50s? Makes you shake your head. Canadians complain bitterly about whatever government we get, but you have to vote or you have no right to complain.

"Happy birthday, Samantha. Make a wish. " ........"It already came true. "

I return to my blog with an ulterior motive. Backpacking Dad (http://backpackingdad.blogspot.com/) has a giveaway of 2 notebooks from John Hughes movies, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Two of my favourite movies of all time, because I am nothing if not an 80s girl.

The challenge is to write about which character I would be. Which is a bit of a poser, because let's face it, as much as we love them, none of those characters is really how we would want to see ourselves. They all have serious flaws, and yet it's those flaws, rather exaggerated for dramatic effect, that make the characters so relatable.

In high school, I was probably most like Samantha from Sixteen Candles. Not because my family ignored me, I was essentially an only child (three much older half siblings aside) and I have nothing to complain of in that regard. But because I was neither cool kid nor uber-geek. I was a good student, with fun friends, but I didn't run with the most popular crowd (mind you, in a grad class of 21 students, 20 girls and 1 guy, there was not a huge distinction) and I didn't spend my time breeding fruit flys.

I suffered from typical teenage angst, I wanted so much to be noticed by guys, but I was really shy. There is no better example of this than my grade 11 year, when we attended the annual "Computer Dance" at a local boy's school. If you never went to one of these, you filled out a form and supposedly the computer matched you with a boy at the school. At the dance you spent some time talking and had a couple of dances with the guy in question, and this was intended to break the ice and get the party going at the first dance of the school year.

Imagine my horror and ecstasy when I was paired with my dream guy... gorgeous, popular, on the rugby team... and super nice as it turns out. He did his best to talk to me, but I was so paralyzed by shyness I could barely put a few words together. All in vain as it turns out, because he had a long term girlfriend from another girl's school. Sigh.

So I didn't get the guy, at least not that time. But in grade 12 I finally figured out what Samantha learns at the end of the movie, that guys are people too. And eventually I got a love life.
I guess what makes me like Samantha today is that although I have a great life, 2 gorgeous children and a great husband, I still sometimes see the "cool" people and wish I fit in there too.
The difference is that now I know that my few friends are really much more cool than the popular kids, and much better suited to my particular brand of nerdiness (I'm a literature / languages/ arts nerd) than those so-called cool people would be.

Many many years after I saw Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club for the first of many times, a wonderful man bought me all of the John Hughes movies on DVD for Christmas one year. He is the amazing sweet man I married and he is the father of my two beautiful children. Meeting him made all my wishes come true.

"Baby brother loves his stickers!"

8 weeks to go until Baby Boy makes an appearance, and of course there's still a lot to get done.
The office is basically moved downstairs to share with D, just a bit of junk still lingering that I have to deal with this week because this weekend the carpet and wallpaper come out.

Over the next couple of weekends the room should be transformed into a nice baby room.
There are still lots of things to pick up. I haven't been buying too much yet but I need to go through M's baby clothes for suitable gender-neutral wear then buy what we need from there. Since we weren't sure she was a girl, I didn't buy much girly stuff until after she was born, so there should be some reusable things.

I am still (touch wood) feeling pretty great by and large. Very pregnant, but healthy.

M is being very sweet about her baby brother. Yesterday she stuck stickers all over my shirt right on my belly, for baby brother. I was not allowed to take them off all day... lol.
She still has her moments, though. I am not naive enough to suppose it will all go smoothly. Yesterday she said she wanted her crib back... I know she really doesn't, it's more her concern about the baby having things that are hers. She's been sleeping in her bed for weeks and I am quite sure if we tried to switch her back there would be even MORE wailing.

Clean sweep?

So as usual it's been a while without posting. I was never good at diaries either.
DH is off work for 2 weeks and we are busy sorting out our junk. My office will become the new baby's room so I have to clean it out and move everything downstairs, into David's office which we will now share. Hmmm. I am still not sure about it but he is clearing out the back half which will give me a place for my stuff and to set up a desk with my printer etc.

I won't use it as much as he does. My laptop is parked on the dining room table which works very well so far. Handy for sneaking online as M plays and easy to tuck away when we have company for dinner.

Today is blissfully cool. Actually yesterday my Mum took M to Gyro Park while I got my hair cut and it was nice and sunny but SO windy it was quite cold. M asked for a jacket which has to be a first. I came out of the hair salon and thought how nice it would be to have ice cream at the beach, picked us each up a frozen treat, not realizing they were already freezing!
Still Miss M enjoyed her frozen juice bar very much. It was fun cleaning her off after she plunged her sticky hands back into the sand though!

The summer is flying by, I am now into my third trimester and our son will be due before we know it.

M seems to be used to the idea now, gives her baby brother a kiss, and made the transition to a big-girl bed like a trooper. We thought we would put it up and let her get used to the idea before putting her down in it at night. First night she said she wanted to sleep in her big girl bed and she has never looked back. A few days later she said the baby could have her crib... and then started telling us we needed to get the baby's room cleared out so that we could take the crib out of her room!

Time for me to get back to work, there's a lot to do and I am not moving so fast right now! Not to mention bending is getting harder! Still I can't procrastinate any longer, time is running out!

Gone gone gone you been gone so long

Wow, such a long time since I posted here. So much has happened.
The dining room is finished and gorgeous. Just need to get the outside stuccoed now and it's done.
I am sitting in it right now with my new laptop.

I have a new laptop because my old computer died. Sad but just in time because I will be losing my office over the next month.
My dear husband has another project to work on, transforming my office into a baby's room.
Sometime in early October we will be welcoming our second child, a son!

We are very happy although I might have preferred to not be pregnant through July and August. M is getting used to the idea slowly. She went from not at all thrilled to talking about how "When my baby brother finishes growing he will play with me!"
so it's really amazing. Now she gives my belly a kiss and talks about "baby brother". I am sure she will be less than thrilled at first when he really comes home and takes a lot of the attention off her. But I am sure she will adapt. She is such a sweet and nurturing child.

In other news, it is hot and I am pregnant. So yesterday dear husband went out and bought an air conditioner. Oh so GOOD!
I just want to stand in front of it all day...

Gearing up for Christmas

So, just as I should be getting ready for Christmas, baking, decorating, making cards....
My husband is planning to tear down a wall in my dining room. To be fair, it was my idea, that he is bringing to fruition with a ton of hard work and serious man-hours.

This summer he re-roofed our house, with the help of his Dad who is absolutely amazing. It was a huge amount of work, but it saved us a lot of money, and while they were doing it they were able to roof over the sunroom. This sunroom has been a huge liability from the moment we moved into this house.

Sunrooms seem like such a great idea. Not so. They are too cold in the winter and become furnaces in the summer. They are the depository for dead plants and various odds and ends you can't find a place for in the house. Worst of all in this case, they leak. We were informed when we bought the house that there had been a leak in the past, but that it was all fixed and we had nothing to worry about. Not so much. Every single winter it has leaked. In Victoria it rains. A lot. It starts raining in earnest in November, and it doesn't stop until May. Well, it doesn't rain every day, but most of them.

So the big plan when doing the roof was to put a proper roof over this area, and build it into the house, then take down the wall to make it a part of the dining room, thus gaining me an extra 8 feet of length. It was my idea, and my father in law helped make it possible.
So now we are at the stage where the wall needs to come down, and probably the ceiling too to do the lighting. The carpet will come up and be replaced by gorgeous strand woven bamboo.

I can hardly wait to have my gorgeous huge new dining room. But here's the catch. It's nearly December. I want to start hanging garlands and stuff, not deal with a construction site in my living room/dining room area. I am very concerned that it will not get completed by Christmas.
I am worried about spending most of the festive season in chaos.
Part of me wants it done so badly, and the rest of me wants to tell them to hold off until January. Sigh.

Long time no post!

Wow has it ever been a long time since I posted on here. I am so bad at keeping journals.

So much has happened, M is 20 months old and the most amazing little person ever. She is talking up a storm, learning her numbers and letters, she can recite from her books and sing songs.
I am loving being home with her, so hard to imagine returning to the salt mines.

That said, I am working on some jewellery for a craft show this weekend, and it has been consuming my life. I am using my old business name, although of course I don't expect to make huge amounts of money, this is just to bring in some extra spending money. Plus it will give me a creative outlet. I have really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things.

Hopefully it will be worth all the effort.