The weekend, the battle of wills, and an evening sans bebe

We spent the weekend in Kingston - visiting the grandparents, including spending a day at my dad's cottage (which is actually a house, as it's winterized and is where he lives, but for some reason is still called the cottage, and anyways.....).

The day at the cottage wasn't as warm as we would have liked, but it didn't rain - so that was good. We spent the day outside - Maddie playing with all my old toys. That was a bit trippy, as I had barely remembered the toys - until of course I saw them again! Vintage Fisher Price is awesome - they just don't make toys so compact (choking hazard?) or with so many little pieces and bits (again, choking hazard?).

There was the classic A-Frame house with all sorts of little bits and pieces included.

And (this was the biggest hit with Maddie) there were Sesame Street Little People .... including her fave - ERNIE!

I was a bit nostagic seeing Mr. Hooper again - because, sad right? He's been dead for a while I think...

And then there was the pull horse - another big hit with Maddie.

She was pushing herself foward and backwards up and down the deck. And we adopted a bit of a vintage parenting attitude for the day - letting her just roam around instead of hovering over her to ensure she didn't push herself right off the deck (she didn't, and she had a blast - so lesson learned? Lighten up a bit and just let her play.)...

There were tonnes of other toys, puzzles and dolls that they had kept in storage as well. It was fun to pick through and go down memory lane a bit.

The only stickler to the visit to Kingston was Maddie's reluctance to take an afternoon nap. And by reluctance, I mean full-on army-trained resistance to the Nth degree. She sobbed and cried everytime I tried to put her down - regardless of how tired she was. I'm really hoping she's not trying to drop the afternoon nap, as um, she's not even 2 yet.

Since we had to work Mon-Tues of this week, but were coming back down to Kingston to spend a few more days with familly for the holiday and remainder of the week, we decided to leave Maddie down with her grandparents, while we enjoyed a few days sans child. We're working, so it's not too exciting, but we did hit up dinner and a movie last night. Movie = The Hangover, possibly the funniest movie I have seen, ever, in my lifetime. So do I recommend you go see it? Hell, yes.

Tonight we have plans to do a BBQ at a friend's house - hopefully anyways, as long as the rain holds off. It's funny how easily you can fall back into the pattern of free-wheeling, come-and-go-as-you-choose behaviour...

Life is a lot easier to manage without a little ankle-biter running around, but I keep getting a little pang of loneliness when I walk past her empty room. From all accounts though, she's having a blast at Grandma's, and I (hope) will be very happy to see us on Wednesday morning...

xxoo.S

PS - Canada Day pics will come tomorrow - she has the cutest damn dress you ever did see - let's just hope it doesn't rain...

Been a while...

Wow - where did July go and how did August get here so quickly? I am officially on 'countdown' as the summer slips away and the days bring me closer and closer to heading back to work. To say I'm looking forward to that would be an outrageous lie, but you can't dread the inevitable, so I'm just trying to enjoy these last few days as much as humanely possible. Which also means we've been incredibly busy lately...

The weekend before last, my step-brother and his family came to visit us for the weekend. My nieces were so revved about getting out to Canada's Wonderland for the day - actually, I think the adults were just as excited to take them!

They arrived on Friday afternoon and Seth and Derek headed into the city to watch a Jays game, while all the 'girls' stayed home, ordered pizza and layed low. Saturday morning we were awokened by thunderstorms - not a great start to our Canada's Wonderland adventure... fortunately we decided to risk it and headed out anyways. Lucky for us, the rain tapered off just as we arrived at the park. We spent the first half of our day in the kids area, watching the girls ride (Auntie Sara joined them on a few rollercoasters). Even Maddie got to take a ride - we took her on the carousel!

The rest of the day was spent in the waterpark - really shows how long it's been since I've been there - I'd never seen it before and it's huge! We headed home late afternoon and bbq'd hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner. The girls watched some of the Hannah Montana concert (in 3D no less!) while we finally got Maddie down to sleep.

The Thompsons left us just after breakfast on Sunday morning, and we spent the rest of the day trying to relax and recoup from all the activity. On Monday I headed out with Maddie for a visit to Kingston - we spent the week there visiting with a tonne of family and friends. Tuesday morning we headed out to my Dad's and Maddie took her first official dip in a lake!

She was enjoying herself until a boat went by and the waves kind of scared her. We visited with Stef and her little boy, Quinn on Wednesday afternoon and headed to Picton on Thurdsay for a craft show. Friday was spent shopping with Gramma Vallier (Maddie and Mommy got spoiled!).

Saturday was our big milestone day - I left Maddie for an overnight stay with Gramma Vallier while I joined Seth, Greg & Liz up at Greg's cottage for the night. From all accounts she was extremely well-behaved and while she didn't take a bottle, she did sleep pretty well.

On Sunday morning, Liz and I left the cottage and headed to Stefanie's house in Inverary for an overnight visit. It's so much fun to watch Maddie and Quinn play together - especially now that they're both mobile! We headed back out to the cottage Monday morning, so Maddie got to meet Greg's parents, and Maddie got to hangout in the sunshine and take another dip in the lake with her Daddy.

It was a busy busy week, and now we're just resting up in preparation for another busy week, as Mama Hat (Grandma Thompson) is headed up for a week-long visit as of this coming Saturday. August is going to be done before we know it!

I'll leave you with a few more pics of our roadtrip...

Maddie loves her rhubarb! Especially after a good dunking in the dog's water dish!

Me and Stef with our little ones!

After a dip in the lake with her Daddy. And check out the 2nd bottom tooth! (it made it's appearance on Friday)

There's lots more pics on our Flickr account - check them out if you have a chance.

xxoo.S

Gratuitous Kingston Pics

Maddie discovering her new best friend - Bailey the dog!

Maddie with Grandpa Burke

Maddie with her cousins, Rebecca + Victoria

Maddie with Grandma Thompson outside our new favourite store!

Maddie took her first bath in a 'big girl' tub while we were in Kingston (I forgot to bring the baby bathtub...)

Sleeping in her playpen at Grandma Thompson's

Playing with Quinn (Stefanie's little boy) - well, more like Quinn stealing her sippy. Stealing... playing... po-tay-to... po-tah-to

To see more of pics of our adventures in Kingston - visit our page on Flickr.

xxoo.S

Roadtrip weekend

Wow, what a week. It started off with a bang - knowing that we had our long weekend/2nd Christmas trip to Kingston starting this Thursday, I had about a million things on the 'to do' list for the week. And how did I get the week started? By busting up my back!

So here's a handy tip for all our readers out there - when you sneeze, don't turn your head. It puts all this strain on some muscle that I can't remember the name of, that runs from your neck down to your ribs. I learned this the hard way - standing there changing Maddie at 8am, I had the sneezes, and kept turning my head to the right to let these monster sneezes out. After I was all done sneezing, my nose was dripping, and while stretching my right arm above my head, I did an almighty sniff and all of a sudden my neck/back/shoulder seizes up. Luckily Maddie was still on the change table (at waist height) so I didn't have to bend to lift her - I carried her into the bedroom and deposited her down onto our bed (the first time I think I was thankful for our mammothly tall bed). As she was getting hungry, I knew this was going to get tricky and my back was continuing to spasm - yikes. I called Seth and left a desperate message on his phone and managed to get myself laid down beside Maddie to feed her before she really freaked out.

Seth called back a few minutes later, and I think, hearing the panic in my voice, made the decision to leave work (on a Monday morning - their busiest time) and come to help me, as I honestly didn't know what I was going to do - I had finished feeding Maddie at this point, and laid down on the bed on my side, could now not get up. Nightmare.

Luckily, while Seth was making the hour drive back home, I was able to 'shush' Maddie to sleep while I laid there in agony, using my labour-breathing-techniques to get myself through the pain of my seizing back muscles. Once Seth got home it took us almost an hour to get me up off the bed and into the bath (which I also learned is a bad bad thing to do for pulled muscles - ice people, you should use ice, not heat). Anyways, to make a long story short, I lounged in the bath trying to feel a bit better while Seth took care of Maddie and called his mom to ask her to come up and help around the house for a couple of days. Thankfully she was able to and she was at our house by 2pm taking care of Maddie, and Seth was on his way back to work.

I was able to get myself in for a last minute appointment with a Chiropractor here in Whitby that afternoon - and he actually really helped to get me on the road to recovery. I can say that I'm now a big believer in Chiropractors - the cracking of the back is still very weird, but I felt tonnes better even after just one appointment - really!

So the rest of the week I took it pretty easy while Debbie helped out tonnes with cooking and taking care of Maddie. I managed to get the rest of the Christmas shopping done (for my family Christmas we were attending that weekend) and get us prepared for our road trip. We left Thursday afternoon and were in Kingston by 2pm - Maddie slept the whole way - such a sleeper! Since Thursday was my bday, my mom came over that evening to visit us and we all had some cake - good times.

Friday was an early morning as we had plans to be at Stef's (in Inverary) by 10am - we visited with her and her little one, Quinn for a few hours that morning. Maddie had a blast watching Quinn play with all her toys (he loved the Glo-worm especially!) - here's a pic of me and Stef with our little ones. Quinn is 9 months and huge, especially next to our tiny little Madds - she looks extra tiny in this pic!

After leaving Stefanie's we headed over to my Dad's place where we visited for several hours and exchanged Christmas gifts. Maddie started to get pretty tired (and cranky) so we headed out around 5pm. We got to Debbie & Shorty's by 5:45 and after feeding Maddie, we let Grandma do some babysitting while we went out for a dinner on our own for my birthday. Ended up downtown at Megalo's - a restaurant that used to be one of our faves, across from the theatre. Dinner was good - we had a few seafood dishes and (with the exception of the paper napkins) it was really nice. Too bad when we got home Maddie was having a bit of a fit. Apparently she was good all evening and started to cry just 5 minutes before we got home. I wasn't too bothered as it only took me a couple of minutes to calm her down, but I think Seth was a little disturbed, he just kept saying "I've never heard that cry before." Oh well, I guess we have to realize that she is going to cry sometimes and while we won't like it, it's not always going to be something we can avoid. Especially when we're not around.

The next day was our big Christmas get together with my family - Mom, Walt, Aunt Reta, Derek, Amy and their 2 little ones. So we of course had to Maddie all dressed up for the occasion. Here she is in the crib at Grandma Vallier's right before we left - don't you just love the boots?

We picked up an ice cream cake and headed out to my Aunt Reta's in Harrowsmith for the festivities. Gifts were exchanged, I played with my nieces a tonne with some of their new toys, and of course we all ate until we were ready to explode on all the nibbles and appetizers that Aunt Reta and Mom made. Maddie got a little cranky a few times, but hey this was her 4th major visit in 2 days so she was getting a little tired of all the attention I think. How priceless is this pic though, with her cousin Rebecca ...

We decided that we were going to head back to Brooklin that night instead of waiting for Sunday morning - so with a quick visit in with the Vallier's and one last stop at my Mom's house, we were back on the road and home by just after 1am. Thank goodness Maddie was out for the count and didn't wake up when we took her out of her carseat and into bed.

It was a great weekend and we enjoyed visiting everyone, but it was tiring for all of us - especially Madds. She's been sleeping a tonne ever since!

S&S

Our first Christmas

The week before Christmas was a busy one. Maddie and I spent a lot of time finishing up the shopping and cleaning up the house. On Saturday we headed to Ikea as a family to buy the bookcases for the front room - they ended up being a bit larger than we expected, so instead of piling the boxes into our car, we opted for the $69 delivery service - they arrive this Saturday - woo hoo!

After Ikea, we headed down to Rob & Vone's to wish them a very merry and drop off some xmas baking ... after a few hours visiting w/ the Emmy's, we headed back home with just enough time to get dressed, get Maddie changed and head over to Greg & Liz's for an early holiday dinner. Liz had her family visiting, an Greg's mom was there - so it was a full house. Maddie was passed around to many welcome sets of arms (here she is with Liz's dad - he was nice enough to hold her while I ate dinner!) and continued her streak of acting like a superstar - I'm hoping this streak never ends, it's always nice to have a non-crying baby when out visiting!

Here's a pic of Maddie with Mommy - taken before I changed her into her sleeper - how cute is that dress and the tights with the red shoes painted on?

Sunday was a very busy day as I went out to do some last minute shopping while Seth watched Maddie. Then after a quick dinner we spent the evening cleaning the house up to be ready for his parents who were arriving the next day to spend Christmas with us.

Poor Seth had to work a half day on Monday (Christmas Eve) and didn't get home until around 4 that afternoon. His parents arrived around noon - which was just before I was about to head out with Maddie to the butcher to pick up the roast (yes, we were blasphemous and had a roast beef for Christmas dinner, not turkey - shocker!). So Shorty and I headed out to the butcher and Grandma Vallier got some alone time with Maddie. Once we got back, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting the appetizers ready for the small get together we were hosting that evening - Greg and Liz were coming over with Greg's brother and sister-in-law, and his mom. Grandma V had brought a tonne of frozen appetizers as well, so it was a good spread. Everyone arrived around 7:30pm and we all enjoyed some "Christmas Cheer" and the munchies and chit-chatted until they left around 11pm or so.

Christmas morning came around 8:30 - Maddie's regular wake-up time and we got her up, changed and fed her as quickly as possible to try and give her the presents that Santa brought in her stocking before she fell asleep again (she likes to sleep in the mornings - A LOT!). Here's a pic of Maddie with her stocking - ignore the bedhead on the two of us! We managed to keep her interested in everything that Santa brought before she drifted off to sleep, which allowed us to open our stockings and have some morning coffee before she was back up. We unloaded the tree and then Seth went to make breakfast while I went to have a bath. After a late breakfast (brunch?) we all sat down to watch a movie and relax a bit. I put the roast beef in around 3-ish and got the potatoes and other sides ready to go.

After only a couple of hours, my first 'classic' roast was done to perfection - medium rare, just like a prime rib roast should be! Along with, we had whipped potatoes (thanks Debbie!), roasted asparagus spears with lemon, steamed green + yellow beans then sautéed with olive oil and slivered almonds, and last but not least, yorkshire puddings. I think for my first official Christmas Dinner, I did a pretty good job. Even got a Christmas pudding for dessert, in keeping with the apparent British theme to dinner - too bad that was kind of gross. Oh well, next year I will actually make one - didn't realize you needed to start it a month in advance.

Boxing Day was spent as many Boxing Days in Canada are I think - watching movies and the Juniors hockey. Grandma and Grandpa V left around 7pm and we gave Maddie a bath and then went to bed shortly thereafter - Seth had to work the next day, and to be honest we were all pretty tired.

So that's our first Christmas in a nutshell - it was enjoyable to finally be able to host a Christmas, and of course unforgettable with Maddie - even if she won't remember it, we always will!

S&S

Edited to add: Here's Maddie's pic of her with Santa - meant to scan this in a while ago - pretty cute for a 10 week old - she looks like she likes him - I'm sure she won't be so cheerful next year!

Feeding frenzy

The weekend after the last post Maddie and I spent in Kingston for a meet + greet shower that my Mom hosted. Not going to lie to you - the drive to Kingston with a 3-1/2 week old is not something I would happily repeat. Something that should have only taken a couple of hours (at most) turned into a 4 hour exhausting drive due to rush hour traffic and a 1/2 hour feeding that had to take place at the rest stop in Trenton.

It was nice to see everyone though, and for Maddie to meet everyone (and be SPOILED with presents). But I learned a few things... a) she doesn't like her playpen for sleeping, b) she will however sleep in her carseat - um, ok whatever works, and c) she will also sleep forever folded up like a pretzel in the baby sling I bought.

Because Friday night was a sleepless one, I kept Maddie in the sling for the most part of the shower - otherwise I think there would have been one FUSSY baby on my hands for the afternoon. So she slept through most of her shower - but as the end of the shower coincided with her feeding time, she did make an appearance right at the very end and got passed around to many women's arms in a matter of minutes. She handled all the attention like a champ and then fed for almost 45 minutes - I guess all the love makes one hungry!

Saturday night was a bit better for sleeping - probably because I didn't even try to get her to sleep in her play pen, instead letting her (gasp!) co-sleep with me in the bed ... whatever works people, whatever works. It's so funny how you can have pre-conceived notions of things you would never do with your baby that quickly get ignored when you realize it could give you a blessed 2 hours of sleep. 2 solid hours? Like heaven in a jar...

So that was our weekend - on Sunday Gramma Vallier joined us on the trip back to Brooklin as she was coming up to stay for the week with us. She spent the week cuddling Maddie and making Seth and I dinner - needless to say we were all quite spoiled.

And she got to join us at Maddie's 4-week doctor's appointment - yes, our little girl turned 4 weeks on Tuesday (Nov 6th) - wow how the time has flown by! For the record, she was 9 lbs 8 oz and measured 21-3/4 inches. That's over 2 lbs gained (from her 7 lbs 3 oz birth weight) and almost 2 inches grown (she was just over 20 inches when she was born) - who says breastfed babies are scrawny!

Seth had this Friday off and so we headed into the "city" to attend the Baby + Toddler show at the MTTC. We almost didn't go as Maddie was clearly starting a growth spurt and was feeding every hour to hour and a half, but then thought we might as well go and see what free samples we could get. Well, the show was nothing like the one that I had attended back in the spring when I was pregnant - it was smaller and had very little in the way of free samples. It would have been a great show if we were going to shop - lots of cool little vendors selling some adorable things, but luckily we had left our wallets in the car.

Anyways, after a little over an hour, we called it quits and headed back out of the city. Unfortunately it was 3:30pm on a Friday afternoon, so it took us 2.5 hours to get home (that's with a few feeding stops for Maddie - watching her cry for food while on the DVP was heartbreaking - again, not a trip that I will happily do anytime in the near future).

Not sure if it was number of feeds that she had that day, or the exhaustion of the 'outing' to the city, but for the first time ever, she slept for 4 straight hours that night (10-2am) ... not that there was a tonne of straight sleep after that 4 hours, but still, 4 hours feels like 8 right now. And she had a great Saturday - very happy and content, although still feeding like a lion. We visited Uncle Greg and Auntie Liz for a few hours on Saturday night - our first social outing as a family, sad but true! Lots of fun though, Auntie Liz kept Maddie amused while Greg showed us their latest Wii game - almost felt like a normal Saturday night, except we left at 9:30pm and were exhausted.

We got another 4 hour sleep out of her last night as well - maybe we're actually getting into some kind of routine here? Not sure - don't want to speculate as I might jinx it. She was up and raring to go this morning at 6am though - and our big milestone for the day was daddy giving Maddie her first bottle. I thought she might fight him on the bottle at first, but she took to it like a champ - made me feel a little sad actually - who woulda thought I could be so easily replaced? Kidding...

So there you go - that's the updates in our lives right now - I'm convinced she's grown another inch just this weekend if this growth spurt is anything to go by. I will try to measure her this week and let you all know. In the meantime - here's a few more pics from the past week - you can see she starting to lose her hair - I hope not for long - her poor little head will be cold without any hair on it this winter!

Cheers,
S&S

Wow, I can't believe that May is almost over - first long weekend of the summer and it was an enjoyable one.

Last weekend saw Seth and I heading to Kingston on Saturday for my Grandma's 90th birthday - there was a tonne of family there for the party - almost like a reunion for me, as I hadn't seen a tonne of them in many, many years. Saturday night we spent with Seth's parents, watching a movie and some hockey, along with pizza from Capri (of course!). Sunday we spent taking the Moms out for a Mother's Day brunch - an all you can eat place that this preggers woman enjoyed!

This past week seemed to drag by - I think for some reason the nicer weather is making it seem longer and longer to wait for the weekend to get here. And since it was a long weekend, the anticipation was even higher I guess!

Saturday I spent downtown shopping along Queen Street with my friend Liz, while Seth went golfing right after work. Because we were meeting up at Liz & Greg's house in Markham for dinner, the ladies picked up dinner on the way home. St Lawrence market was just about shutting down for the day by the time we got there, but managed to get some filet mignons, some huge sea scallops and fresh tiger shrimp - dinner was looking to be quite promising!

The boys finally got home around 8pm, and we cooked all the goodies up - eating dinner outside, such a nice luxury that I don't think I'll ever get tired of! After dinner, we decided to play some games - they had just gotten a Wii gaming system, so we had to try that out - a lot of fun, and great exercise! After that, some board games and lots of wine for everyone (me, I was on the non-alcoholic Becks - the only way I think I'll make it through the summer) - it ended up being 3am before we got to bed - late night for this recent early bird.

Sunday we got a fancy breakfast made for us, and we played some more Wii before we left. We then spent the rest of the afternoon running some errands before settling in for the night. Today was a pretty lazy day - although I did have brunch with a friend, and Seth did a bit of cleaning around the house, but mainly we just lazed around.

All in all, a pretty perfect long weekend had by all! Hope your weekend was just as restful!

S&S