28 weeks

Welcome to my 3rd trimester. Have a seat, relax, put your feet up, and I will take you through my list of "How I know I have reached my 3rd trimester"

1. Strangers stare at me as I walk by them in stores. When alone I get smirks or full out smiles. When I have my two children in tow I get side long glaces and looks of confusion "is she really pregnant, she already has two kids...?"

2. Multiple night wakings to go pee. This has just started for me and I was only up 3 times last night. I am REALLY looking forward to the once an hour pee trips of weeks 38 to 42. Yes, I fully expect to got close 42 weeks pregnant. I was with my first two children, why would this one be any different.

3. Vivid dreams. I am all dreams all the time and I am tossing and turning and waking up and having a hard time falling back asleep. I know this is supposed to be our mind/bodies way of preparing us for sleeplessness of a new born, but it sucks. I am all for sleeping comfortably till the baby is born and suffering through the shock of sleeplessness at that point. Why start the process now body! WHYYYYYY.

4. Leg cramps are getting stronger and more frequent. Seriously, isn't it enough that we have to endure multiple bathroom visits, vivid dreams, violent heart burn and the baby constantly spinning around like a he thinks my uterus is the Zipper. Leg cramps, our legs are no where near our uterus! This just feels like punishment.

5. Cranky mcCranky pants is back. Yes, after a brief respite during the "Golden Month" (no golden trimester for this chick) we are back to Moody with a capital M. You should see my co-workers run the other way as I come down the hall. All except for one of my staff who thinks it is humorous to make fun of my crankiness. He will learn... oh yes, he will!

6. Annoyance with maternity clothing. Even some of my maternity clothing is uncomfortable. Two pairs of my more fashionable jeans (And by fashionable I mean they are less than 5 years old) are annoying the heck out of me. Which leaves me with maternity clothing that is between 8 and 15 years old. I would be a prime candidate for "What not to wear, the Maternity edition". (BTW I am way to cheap frugal to buy new clothing that I will only wear for 3 to 5 months, so uggers clothes it is!)

7. I can't watch Baby Stories, Bringing home baby or read any blog posts that involves talk about any prenatal mishaps or God forbid infant or child death. It was already hard to watch those shows or read those blog posts anyhow, but now I find myself thrown into full blown panic attacks. And, well that is just not good. So for now, I must avoid.

8. I look at my to-do list and see all the projects that are on it and go into a panic about having to do them before the baby is born. I know I won't do them. Many of them will remain not-done when the baby is 1 year old. But that doesn't stop me from stressing about it.

Hmmm, fun stuff. Maybe I will relax a bit when I am off work in 8 weeks, but probably not. You would never guess from this post, but I really do love being pregnant. I do, I really do!

fencing anyone?

During the summer Olympics my oldest son watched some fencing. He was instantly smitten and I am sure an obsession with Star Wars and light sabers has NOTHING to do with it. We looked into our city recreational schedule and found they only offered fencing for children 13 and over. We told him the sad news and promptly forgot about it. He didn't. Over the last year or so he has mentioned his desire to learn to fence about a MILLION times. Seriously. I never imagined he would continue to want to try this sport. Especially since it isn't a sport you see every day, he would have to be seriously obsessed for the idea to stick in his brain that strongly.

By sheer co-incidence we were at a company picnic a few weeks ago and I just happened to mention D's fencing desires to a co-workers wife. She laughed and said that her son also wanted to try fencing and that it just happened that the RA Centre (a local sports centre) was having a free class the next evening. OMG. I cleared my schedule, left work early and we headed on over.

The fencing room was pretty small, but you don't need a lot of room for this sport. The instructor was a french man who had recently returned from France where he had been teaching professional Fencing for 5 years. D loved it. First they learned the footwork, then they were able to put on all the attire and work with an actual foil. He thought it was great.

The timing of the class isn't great for me. Not while I work full time. Classes for his age start at 5:30pm on Monday's. We were not able to commit to a class yet, but I am thinking we will sign him up for the spring session and see how it goes. I will be on mat leave so heading into town at that time won't be a problem. The RA centre is about 40 min drive from my house and 5:30 is prime congestion on the HWY, so I may have to give us even more time just to be safe.

For any Ottawa bloggy buddies who might be interested, here is the link. The first class of each session (and there are 4 a year) is a free drop in, no commitment. Although the teacher did mention that at the next class they would play "Pirates of the Caribbean". D was a little disappointed that he wouldn't be continuing, but when I explained that he would be able to go in the spring he got over it fairly quickly.

They have quite a few fun programs at the centre, the only thing that makes me sad is how far it is from my home. My husband was quite drawn to the Shooting Club. It even has the free drop in at the start of each session. What is it with boys/men and guns and swords. :)

FYI: This is not a sponsored post. I just thought it was a really cool program and I figured if I hadn't heard about it there may be others who hadn't either.

Vegetables of my labour

My garden has been doing very well. It actually perked up once all that infernal rain stopped. Even though the amount of sunlight it received was negligible I still managed to grow the tallest green pepper plants I have ever seen (easily 3.5 feet tall) and harvested an unmanageable number of cucumbers.

With all the cucumbers on my counter I decided I would make a Greek Salad. But I didn't have any ripe tomatoes. The ones I had picked were still green. So I waited and waited. And finally two nights ago my tomatoes were ready. Last week I had picked 3 small-medium green peppers and a few small red onions (about golf balls sized).

I got down to business, chopping all these veggies. It took me about 40 mins to assemble the whole thing. I tripled the recipe because I wanted to use 3 cucumbers dam it! Not just one! Along with one 9pm trip to the garden with the flash light to pull another red onion my salad grew and grew. I had to change bowls twice because I kept underestimating how big the finished salad would be. The end product is just to die for. I LOVE Greek salad. I took the recipe out of my Eat Shink and Be Merry cookbook. The part that makes me want to gush every time I eat it, is that every single veggy in this salad was grown by me. There were times this summer that I wondered if this garden was worth it. It costs more to grow veggies than it does to buy them at the grocery store. The work, the time, the fertilizer, the WAITING. But now that harvest time is here I am in heaven. To make such a wonderful salad without leaving my home (I did have to go out and buy the feta and olives...). To know where my food came from. What was put on it to help it grow. This is my idea of heaven.

Next year the garden will be bigger. :)

busy busy busy

I have been trying to catch up on my blog reading over the last two days. I have been a busy lady lately, what is it about the month of September that makes schedules go berserk. This weekend we had 3 birthday parties to attend. I insisted that we must paint the boys room so that we could get the bunk bed in and set up. And to top it off we had D's hockey sort outs. He had a sort out practice both Saturday and Sunday. So... something had to give. And it was the painting. Kevin, bless him, got up at 5am to get D to a 6am hockey practice, then he rushed D off to a party, while I shuttled M to his 1st of two parties that day. We all reconvened in our living room at 6pm only to discover that D had at least an hours worth of homework and it was all due to be turned Monday.

Tip for all you parents who don't have kids in school yet. When homework comes home on Wednesday and says it has to be turned in the following Monday, DON'T wait till Sunday night to do it. Trust me.

I spent the next hour arguing with him as we did the homework. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kevin and M had started to prime the bedroom walls. By the time all the work was done it was well after 9pm and we all headed off to bed. I fired off an e-mail to my work letting them know I wouldn't be in on Monday. I spent a pleasant day on my own painting their room. It looks great. Although the previous owners had painted the walls AND the trim blue. Tonight our plan is to paint the trim white. Once that is done, the Bunk Bed will be assembled. WHOO HOO. The boys can't wait.

I will post pictures when I get time :)

Project revealed

Since becoming pregnant I have started a mental list (I should really write it down) of projects that I have been neglecting. Some of them are big (freezer, storage room, boys room, play room...) And some are small. This was a smaller project but one I had been wanting to do for a long time. Not only because it was long overdue, but also because I thought it might be fun. Fun in a way that de-cluttering the storage room just isn't.

I introduce to you, The Rocking Chair:

This rocking chair was handed down to D about 4 years ago. A lovely cousin of mine had passed it on to us along with a bike and bags of clothing that were no longer used by her then 12 year old. It has lived in our garage since its arrival. It was dirty and old I had the idea of recovering it the minute I saw it. M was an infant and I never did get around to it. M actually liked the chair more than D did and as soon as he was walking he would sit in it and rock away. Many many times in the last 4 years I have had to lug it out of the garage, onto the driveway, for him to sit on. Kev has asked me a number of times if we could just put it at the road on garbage day. I couldn't let him do it. I kept insisting that one day I would recover it and it would find a place INSIDE our home. Two weekends ago, that time had come.
It actually took me a lot longer than I thought to get all the old fabric off. Removing each and every staple is painstaking work and now I know why it is so expensive to have a couch reupholstered. I kept track and it took me 5 hours to get it all off. Of course you have to remember that I am preggy and that it was my first time doing this. I don't have any professional upholstery tools so I was removing the staples with a screw driver and needle nose pliers. And I was supervising the children playing outside at the same time. There were a number of breaks that involved me yelling at the kids to stop climbing on the car, get away from the road and get out of the tree!

When D was a baby I had taken an upholstery course at a local interior designers home. We covered a foot stool. It was a simple project but it introduced me to a few of the concepts and obviously gave me a false sense of security that I could tackle this project. I was convinced that the actually covering of the naked chair would be much quicker than the removal of the material had been. I was wrong. I have already worked on it for over 4 hours and I am not quite done. Even though I am not done I still wanted to do the reveal. The next two weekends are very busy and I am not sure if I will get around to finishing it right away. Regardless I did enough to make it comfortable and it has taken up residency in our family room.

Introducing: The Improved Rocking Chair
I still have the sides and the back to cover (as evidenced by the bits of stray fabric that are visible) but it is complete enough for M to sit on it and enjoy it. I am very happy with the results. It is my first attempt at re-upholstery and I did make a few mistakes but nothing tragic and overall I think it looks great. M chose the fabric himself and loves it. It wasn't exactly what I had been looking for, but since it is his chair I figured I could let him chose. The fabric came out of the bargain bin and was very inexpensive. Other than my time, the most expensive part was the high density foam. I was shocked at how much that stuff costs, thankfully I only needed one meter.

So there you have it. My secret project. Of course now that I am done this, I am feeling like I could tackle the couch. Although the hours of work involved (and the sewing, I am a novice sewer) scare me. This project has me thinking about taking a more advanced class in upholstery and seeing if maybe it is a doable project. Who knows. Maybe I have a future in this...

He loved it

Of course he did, right?!?!? He even loved the bus ride. When I picked him up from day care he told me all about his tour of the school, about the stuff they did in class and how much he enjoyed the bus ride. I aged about 3 years yesterday stressing about it, but whatevs. He did great and that is all that matters. The teacher took the most adorable photo of him and sent it home in a card so I do have one photo of his official first day. Today he was all excited to go and with all the hustle and bustle I forgot to take a photo. I will take one tomorrow and pass it off as my first day photo for all eternity. Only you, me and the blogosphere need know, its our little secret.

I finally have my secret project post ready to write, but darn it all if work isn't super busy today. I will have to make time later. I just wanted to drop in and let you know we all survived.

It could have gone worse - I know

I know things could have gone worse this morning. But trust me when I say it was pretty bad.

A little background about M's situation. He attends day are at the school where he is registered. He has attended this daycare with his brother all summer. In the last two weeks he has been adjusting to the reality that his brother is no longer attending the day care (only comes in at 3pm after school) and has not enjoyed this change. There have been a lot of tears at drop off time.

This morning M woke up and announced "I AM NOT GOING ON THE BUS TO SCHOOL". Kev and I talked to him. About how much fun it would be, what a big boy he is. How he will enjoy going into this class room (instead of the day care). Nope, he would have none of it. He wanted me to bring him to daycare first and that was that. Of course this put Kevin and I on edge. He has to take the bus, he has to adjust to this new routine. The easy way out would be to drive him. But in reality it would just be a delay, when we would arrive at day care he would cry. I knew we couldn't give in. I was very stressed out about it.

After breakfast the kids were watching a bit of TV (I figured it was a good distraction for M) in our bedroom. I was getting M's clothing ready to get him dressed and I had placed my Green Smoothie on my bed side table. I heard a plop and almost didn't register that something had happened. I turned around and D was sitting there staring at my glass on the floor. Green smoothie spilled on my bedroom carpet, there was spatter on the walls, some of my books and the bed. Thankfully we have a very old (and stained) carpet because that stuff just didn't want to come out. I scrubbed as much as I could before we had to leave but there is a nice green streak just beside my bed now. Teaches me from bringing it upstairs in the first place. UGH.

We proceeded to the front door to get ready and M refused to put on his JK crown. The one he needs to identify to everyone (from bus driver to teachers at the school) that it is his first day. We finally talked him into wearing it, but he refused to let me take a photo. I tried a number of times with no success. I considered sneaking one, but I figured it would set him off so I didn't bother. I will take a photo tomorrow, if he lets me.

He looked so upset and when we saw the bus coming up the road his little chin started to quiver and his eyes got all wet and I almost lost it. I made sure D was able to sit with him on the bus and sent him on his way. He sat on the other side of the bus, so I wasn't able to wave, which in hindsight is probably a good thing. But once the bus turned the corner I started to cry. It was so not the first day I had imagined. I know it will be fine. I know he will do very well. But my heart just broke into a million pieces.

Then Tims got my order wrong!

Then I got to work and found out that I won Dani's Mothership Photography giveaway! So today isn't all bad. I can't wait to pick out my print! Thanks Dani! You rock!

Oh man. I need lunch.

Week 25

Is it strange that I occasionally find myself a bit overwhelmed with the idea of baby number 3. I will see a baby on TV and I will think "Gee, I will have one of those soon" and then WHAM!!! OMG I WILL HAVE ONE OF THOSE SOON! Its not like I haven't done this before. I am sure I felt the same way when I was pregnant for M, but thanks to placenta amnesia, all bad/scary memories of that pregnancy are long gone. For the record, he is kicking up a storm. Nothing painful yet, but occasionally he targets my bladder and that is just wrong. "Kid, stay away from Mommies bladder, got it!"

Did I mention that this awesome co-worker has given us a bunk bed, for FREE. He rocks. I picked it up last week and now it is jammed in our already jam packed garage. I am hoping to get going on the boys room this weekend. We have lots of activities planned over the next 3 weeks and I imagine this will be a 2 week long process. Get walls ready, clean, patch, all that fun stuff, this weekend. Paint next weekend. That's what I am hoping for anyhow. We have to go out and buy a mattress for the top bunk. M's current mattress is one of those deep ones, making it way too thick to fit on the top bunk. The bottom is a double bed, D already has a double so we are good to go there. I am very excited about the prospect of the boys sharing a room. Even though I anticipate some fighting (M is a bed time talker and D likes to just GO TO SLEEP ALREADY) I think they will find their grove and eventually love being bunk mates. I shared a room with my sister for 6 years and I have no bad memories of that time (except maybe for the china doll wall paper my mom put on our walls, but that is a whole other post! I must find a sample of that online to share - CREEPY! Love you Mom!)

So, did you do it?

Hmm, no. No I didn't inventory my freezer. But honestly, the weather was so nice this weekend I just didn't have the heart to spend an hour in the basement. Instead I spent hours and hours outside. My "other project" (not ready to disclose yet) was portable so I took it outdoors and did it while supervising the kiddies playing.

Saturday we had an impromptu family gathering at my sisters house. It was a blast and dinner was amazing. My sister made a Greta and Janet Podlesky (Crazy Plates, I think) recipe for "No fry fried chicken". OMG it was to die for. Awesome. And my 6 year old niece made a really nice coleslaw that we all gushed over. I see an accomplished cook in her future.

Sunday we spend at home relaxing and enjoying time outdoors. For dinner we ate Jerk steak with home grown potatoes and carrots. I have to admit that I had been a bit turned off on growing carrots. They just seemed to take so long to grow and the whole root veggie, is it ready yet issue. And then I ate these and ok, I am convinced, I will plant more carrots next year. Yummmm.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at Brittania beach. Technically the beach was closed but there were tons of people there enjoying the heat. The boys loved trying to catch minnows and playing in the sand. I sat in my law chair soaking up the rays for 2 hours. It was heavenly.

How was your weekend?

Project for me

I am starting to feel the pinch of "I need to get this done before the baby is born". So many things I need want to do. Clean out the storage room. Turn my hubby's office into a play room. Get a computer set up on our main level so I can supervise online time. Clean out the chest freezer...

13 years ago I lived in a condo in the city. I was sharing my condo with my best friend Dani, who was attending college, and my soon to be husband (living in sin, oh ya!). My sister and her boyfriend (sin again, later became her husband) moved to town and needed a place to stay until they found on pad of their own. They set up a cot (OMG this thing was ancient) in my living room and bunked there for 2 months. It was actually a fun time. You would think 5 people crammed into a 2 bedroom condo would be too much, but we were all young, care free and had lots of fun. As a thank you for letting them squat in my living room they gifted me with a medium chest freezer. I was instantly smitten and I still love him, although I now affectionately call him the black hole.

I am a first class bulk shopper. I love buying things on sale and freezing them to use later. My biggest problem is my memory. I forget what I have in there. And since the freezer is perpetually full I don't always bother to dig down deep. As a result you have me whining because I have no supper ideas while I have perfectly good food frozen in the basement. You see, I need to plan better. Take things out to defrost. Set the timer to cook things while I am gone. Use my crock pot. This weekend I am planning on going through my freezer. I won't be cleaning it out, I always clean my freezer in the winter, so I can just put all the food outside while it defrosts. I will be taking inventory of what is in there. I will place said inventory on my fridge and I WILL, I WILL, I WILL plan meals from the items found therein. I want to clean that thing out so that I can fill it with ready made meals to get me through the first few weeks after the baby is born.

I have another project planned for this weekend, but I will wait till next week to disclose the finished product. Happy Labour Day weekend all!

I am 24 weeks pregnant. I can't believe I am 24 weeks pregnant. I know I feel like I am. The baby is kicking up a storm, my heartburn is on overdrive and I have some serious round ligament pain. But that isn't what I am here to talk about today.

About 5 weeks ago I had my 19 week ultrasound. Everything looks normal and we expect a healthy and (please God) happy baby. My husband and I casually asked the ultrasound tech about the sex. We both wanted to know. I have two sons and would have been over the moon to be told I was having a daughter. Alas it was not to be. A little penis was sitting there on the screen for all to see. The tech said she was surprised we hadn't noticed it, it had flashed by a number of times.

I have to admit, I cried. Not big sobbing tears, but I cried. But my reaction surprised even myself. Before the ultrasound I was a bit worried about discovering the sex. Would I be upset with the baby? Would it affect bonding? But afterward, even with tears and sadness, I was happy. Happy to know that my brood would now include a 3rd son. That, even as a boy, I will, already do, love him with everything I have. That I can't wait to meet him, to kiss his toes and sniff his head. He will be my last child and I will cherish every moment I have with him.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't another side. The side of me that is mourning the fact that I will never have a daughter of my own. I always pictured myself with a daughter. It was never "if" I had one, it was "when". It has taken me a bit of time to get past this feeling. Maybe I won't ever get past it. Maybe it will be when my own sons have daughters of their own.