Thursday, July 31, 2008

You had to be there...


This may not be as funny if you weren't there, but last night I went upstairs to check on Maya after we had a door to door solicitor at 8:51 (oh the rage!) that I thought may have woken Maya. She wasn't in her bed when I peeked, so I looked in our bed, not there, looked in Julia's crib, not there, not in the hardwood room either. So as i'm standing there scratching my head, i figure I should look further into our room and check our bathroom. There she is, standing on the stool by the sink, holding my eye make up removal pads in one hand, and carefully placing them on the counter with the other hand very carefully, the way you'd lay cards down on a table! They were all over the counter! She looks at me and goes "Hi Mommy! I nap!" and she was SO proud of herself. The cat came around the corner, and she gasped a little, got excited and cocked her head a little and went "Hi kitty!!" I couldn't stop laughing, I was almost gasping for breath because she was just cracking me up. My nutty kid! Earlier that night we had been playing with the match game that Shelley gave her for her birthday, I think she pulled the idea from there. I hustled her off to bed, and this time she stayed, hah.

These days she's started to put together "I" with a verb, or something she makes into a verb. "I sleep? Nap? Soo?" (soo=soother)

We traced our bodies out with chalk on the patio out back tonight, one with Maya's little body, another with Julia's, and I tried to show Maya how to do mine. She seemed like she got the hang of it and was tracing my body, then all of a sudden she veered off and started doodling. She makes the funniest concentrating noise, just a really loud "UHHHHHHHH" monotone drone. So she was doing that and doodling while I was laying on the concrete trying to get her to trace me!

And I swear, I swear Julia laughed today! Ah what a sweetie. I can't believe she's 6 weeks!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

She walks to the beat of her own drum!

Is what I've learned about Maya, she really does! We went to the zoo yesterday and had a great time, Maya keeps me laughing and busy, that's for sure. I handed her her sunglasses, and she promptly put them on, upside down, and wore them that way the whole day, every time I looked at her I couldn't stop laughing. We went to the playground first off so I could nurse Julia, and Maya went through the tunnel there singing and yelling the whole way. She used to be so slow at it that I would go through with her to help hed through but now she's a speed gonzalez and goes through in no time.

So I'm sitting on the bench nursing Julia, and surprise, Maya is gone. I look for the pink sunglasses, no luck. So now I'm walking around the play area holding a nursing baby with my shirt pulled up around my chest. Fabulous! Find her in the older kids play area where there is a little boy who has her cornered and is beating her with these big hanging obstacles. Poor Maya! Good news is she came out without me having to retrieve her with Julia hanging from my boob. :P

Maya has this thing for hippos, like big time. Loves them, and she'll randomly look at us and say quizzically "Hippos?" and get very upset if we aren't going to see hippos right then. So we spent about half an hour looking at hippos. I couldn't help her down to the tank fast enough so she ended up holding the hand of some random woman to make it down the stairs to the tank because she wouldn't wait for me!

We went to the zoo again today, this time to meet up with some friends. Maya had her trusty binoculars with her which she kept looking at the world through, the wrong way! The one time she was looking through them properly was at the hippo tank again, when she was watching the Tilapia fish they keep in the tank. I guess she wanted a closer look at their scales?? Who knows! While we were watching the gorillas, she was pointing at the momma gorilla (she didn't know it was the mother gorilla though) and saying "mommy!" My friend Morgan said "Either she knows this gorilla is the mom, or she thinks you look like a gorilla!" I really hope it was the former, but she'd be a pretty smart monkey to know that.

Yesterday too while we were at the zoo, and I was nursing Julia yet again, she started trying to take her shirt off. I'm trying to get her to put her shirt back on, and she refused, so i'm sitting in the park half naked myself nursing, with a toddler with no shoes, no socks (she removed these too) and her shirt around her waist. She was trying to nurse Julia! Finally i told her that the zoo didn't let little girls without shirts stay at the zoo, and that she had to wear her shirt if she wanted to stay. So she reluctantly put her shirt back on! What a nut...

Julia is doing great, she's starting to spend more time awake, and interacting with us, which is awesome! She is SO smiley, so happy, and so gorgeous. Yes I realize i'm biased. She just takes the world in stride and goes along with Maya and I so easily. While she's awake, she will smile at just about anyone who smiles at her. It's so wonderful!

What I need to try and remind myself...

Babies Don’t Keep
By Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,
Lullabye, rockaby, lullabye loo.
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo,
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo,
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs;
Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Getting into the swing of things...

Time goes so quickly these days! Julia is getting bigger and bigger and I'm not that emoional about it unless I think about it too much. She smiles all the time now! Huge, face splitting, eye crinkling smiles. And her sister gets cuter and smarter ever day I swear. We had our first moment of baby jealousy/regression the other day when I brought out Maya's old high chair which can be angled back for a newborn so Julia could join us at the table. Maya threw a fit! Luckily I still had an old high chair that was given to us around so Julia was sitting in the Chicco chair, and then Maya - who hasn't sat in a high chair since she was one! - in the Graco high chair. What a weirdo.

We went to storytime Monday with Nana while she was here, and Maya was not very well behaved, she roamed all over the room and wouldn't sit down, of course I was trying to nurse Julia and Maya wouldn't listen to Nana. We went back today and it was great, and so was Maya! They started and ended in a circle holding hands, awww. It was Maya's first time holding other kids hands, and she got right in there, holding hands, trying to sing along. So cute. :)

Later today we were playing outside, Nana bought Maya a little tea set for outside in her playhouse, so she and I had a tea party. She gestured at me to sit down on the bench of her little house, and she poured me tea complete with sugar and cream. Then she put it all away on the shelves of her little house! She's such a cute little girl, so smart!

She also took a huuuge header off the couch today. :( She was bouncing around on the sofa (not smart...i blame daddy as I was cooking!) and went feet over head flying over the arm and onto the tile floor head first. Tears were shed, but she was back to her old self in no time. It was a very very scary spill though.

And me? Well I'm settling into being a stay at home mom I think, we're just trying to figure out how best to make this all work for us. I'm not getting EI like most working/ex working moms because of the lay off situation with work, so we're just getting used to a single income, and it's scary. To me anyways, i don't think anything phases Ian! One thing that changed massively for me since having Julia is my housekeeping skills. Even after I had Maya i was never very good at housekeeping, for some reason I just never got into all the cooking and cleaning. But this time? Man is my house spotless! Even my mom commented on how tidy it was, and that's when you know it's clean. Which was nice, because usually when my mom comes she's offering to clean something for me, which for some reason bugs the crap out of me.

Funny story - I went to register my TD Waterhouse account today online, and there was a section to accept terms of certain financial reporting houses for real time market prices or something. Anyways, there was a section for "non professionals" to fill out, with Name, Address, and Profession, along with four other questions that didn't really pertain to me so I didn't fill those out. Well the form wouldn't accept my answer, it said all the fields must be filled out! So I giggled to myself imagining someone reading my form and typed in: Job Title: Mommy, Job Description: Cooking, Cleaning, Childcare, Employer: Self Employed (I should have put Ian, Maya and Julia!), and I can't remember the fourth question. But really, what the heck else is a "Homemaker" going to put in there?! And can I just say how much I hate the term "Homemaker"? Yick...

Sometime I'll put some effort into figuring out photo posting...

Monday, July 14, 2008

So begins another week

Another day, another projectile puke. Arg! And on the day when all my shorts that fit are in the wash. Back to the lovely maternity capris that are now falling off me, sigh.

Julia started smiling last week, at 3 weeks of age. :) She's starting to make a lot more noises other than crying now, she coos and tries to chat a bit, it's pretty funny and so darned adorable. She's sick though too which breaks my heart. She wakes up snorting and crying because she can't breathe, babies don't seem to know how to breathe through their mouths! So her face is all red from not breathing and she's just snorting away. Man that makes for a shitty nights sleep! I really need to take more pictures, but this mama is so freaking tired. And she's sleeping on me most of the time and I dare not disturb her.

I took Maya and Julia to the library this morning for storytime, Maya loved it! They tell a story, then do an activity, and repeat. We even watched a little video too, and Maya narrated it much to the chagrin of the other kids in the room. (the age range is 2-5, so she was one of the youngest ones) At one point there were a whole ton of different animals on the screen and she didn't know which one to point out first; "cowpiggoatsheepgirraffeRRRRRR!(elephant)

And i think she's just entering into the "what's that?" stage. I was reading Martha Stewart cooking magazine or whatever it's called at lunchtime and she started pointing at everything "What's that?" "Pineapple" "p-appel?" "Yep, pineapple honey!"

Monday, July 7, 2008

Snippets from our life

Sometimes my posts will just come in wee little 'soundbytes' as i have time to jot things down. I want to remember everything and i don't always have time to write ginormous posts or the memory to remember things.

We call Julia "peacock baby" because she sounds just like a peacock when she cries. When she wakes and wants to feed there's no preamble to her demands, just a very sudden crashing shriek that makes you want to attend to her as soon as possible! The funny thing is before she was born, i bought her a stuffed animal toy that rattled, had crinkly paper, bright colours and black and white, just a little toy, and it was a peacock!

Maya had a silly day today. A neighbour had invited us to drop by anytime we wanted to go for a walk, so I packed Julia and Maya up to go for a walk because we were having a frustrating morning. (someone left a pen out that she used to stab the furniture, as well as a glass of pepsi with a few drops left over that got dumped on the carpet and grapes which got trampled into the carpet, all while I was trying to nurse her sister) Well it took me about 20 minutes of trying to get her to take her hands off the van, she kept yelling "CAR!" as in she wanted to go for a car ride. Holy cow kid...she's always trying to get outside to play and here we are, outside, and she wants to get in the car! Finally i dragged out the stroller (while wearing Julia in a sling) and Maya was more than happy to ride in the stroller. Goofball. So we do a quick spin around the neighbourhood, get home and inside, and Maya starts going "Park? Walk?" Gah...we were just there!

I gave Maya a small bowl of jello, and I swear I made her the happiest kid ever, she was so happy. She looked at me and said "Mama? Yello?" and I said "Yeah, Jello!" And she brought me over a spoonful and fed me some jello! So cute. I was singing the Jello song (J-E-L-L-O! - think back to the Bill Cosby days) and she was trying to sing it too but it was coming out more like a cheerleader cheer: "G - E - E - E - O!" over and over. Oh, she calls Julia Gee too, she can't quite say J's yet. It's awesomely cute!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Wow...I have two kids!

Two beautiful and amazing girls at that. Julia is now three weeks old and growing in leaps and bounds every day. Maya is 2, and simultaneously fabulous and frustrating! It's such a great age. It will be hard not to gush over everything Maya is doing and not feel bad for not talking as much about Julia, so we'll start with her!

Julia, bless her little heart, sleeps a large part of the day which makes life easier as a new mom of two. She does have occasional painful gassy periods now and then, but we haven't given her gripe water or anything to try and alleviate that. Daddy didn't figure she needed any (roll eyes) but i'll be picking some up the next time we're out grocery shopping. She's been smiling regularly for about a week which is so sweet! She'll smile at her sister goofing around for her or giving her kisses. She's also a champion nurser, just like her sister was. And growing so fast! After just a week she was already a pound heavier than her birth weight which is just amazing.

Big sister Maya is absolutely in love with her little sister, it's wonderful. Adding a sibling to the family could have gone so many ways, I'm so happy that so far it's gone as well as we could have hoped. I'll never forget Maya's little face in the hospital as she peeked her head in my room and said "mommy? baby??" and came running over to see me. Her face just lit up when she saw her sister and immediately she wanted to hug and kiss her, and still does every day! I'm such a lucky mommy.

Maya is hilarious, she makes us laugh and smile daily with all her hijinks and silly things she says and does. I need to make more of an effort to record them for posterity. Right now what makes me smile a lot daily is how polite she is, she always says "yes, please" and "thank you". We're still working on "no thank you" and "you're welcome", but it will come in time!

Anyways - now that I have one post down hopefully more will come. Now, it's bedtime. :)

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

 


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