Prenatal Class

Last night Michael and I attended our first of 2 refresher prenatal classes. I honestly don't remember much about my first pregnancy or the class that we attended or the labour and delivery, so when we heard about this refresher course we thought it would be a good idea.
We talked about our first experience with labour and delivery and then what to expect - pretty standard stuff - and then we watched a video called Stages of Labour. I think we watched the same video the first time we took the class, but this time I actually watched the whole thing. It was pretty graphic and pretty much showed everything that's going to happen which was just not exciting to see at all. Just because I've been through this once doesn't mean I'm any more prepared for it! Actually Rae said that our bodies will remember and have an easier quicker time with the labour because the muscles will remember, so that's kind of cool. Now all I can think of is that stupid video...

Next week we get a tour of the hospital and apparently a lot of things have changed for the better which is great to hear. They're going to have a mini-wing for early labour (so they don't tie up labour rooms), and currently have birthing balls in each room and a lactation consultant available full time, plus the epidural rate has gone from 2-4% when I had Aidan up to 30%. We spent a lot of time talking about epidurals. Of the 3 couples in the class 1 had had an epidural the first time around but her husband didn't want her to have it again because of the risks and because it took the guy 3 tries to get the needle in properly. I'm really not sure how I feel about an epidural. On one hand I think it would be really great because it would greatly diminish the pain and I could maybe handle the whole thing a bit better. On the other hand there's a needle and tube going into your back which can cause problems and headaches and a 15% chance that it might not be effective. I don't know if part of my problem comes from the fact that it's not natural, but I'm just not completely sure about it. I know it's easy to weigh the pros and cons now when I'm not in labour - I definitely know what I would say if I was in labour, if I get to be one of the 30% :) What do you think - would you get one if you could?

My next doctor's appointment is on July 12th and if I understood her properly, she's going to book my induction too. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll book it for earlier than the 25th or 26th!
Thinking about the 25th or 26th of July seems a ways away, but I only have 5 more days of work left and that is very exciting! Lately when I pick up Aidan he tells me that I stayed away for too long and that he missed me - talk about a guilt trip! At least his behaviour has improved at Darlene's house.

Well, that's about it happening around here. Tonight Aidan and I are off to the old house and I am going to clean out the oven and cupboards while he has a bath. Hopefully I can get that all done! We have our carpets being cleaned tomorrow, Pat should be painting tomorrow or Saturday and then our walk-through with the guy from the church is on Monday. I'm excited for it to all be over, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Maybe it will seem like less once the carpets are cleaned and walls look better. All I can say is we better get that whole damage deposit back....

Things I love about my new house

Laminate Flooring!!

I love the laminate flooring because it's easy to clean (although needs sweeping more frequently) and also because it's hilarious to watch Aidan slipping and sliding around while he tries to chase/get away from Michael.

This is a view of our hallway. The doorknob on the lefthand side is the hall closet, then Hagatha's room and then Aidan's room. Right across from Aidan's room is our room and then the bathroom. It's kind of hard to see, but at the back of the hall there are 3 wavy mirrors and I think they look really cool.

Our very own mailbox, right outside our front door.

Last night while I was making dinner I was wondering if there was any mail and then I realized I didn't have to trek across the whole parking lot, I could just open my front door! Sure enough, there was 1 letter - but it was for a previous resident. Maybe we'll get lucky today :)

That's right - 2 sinks!

Our apartment had 2 sinks, but our little house only had one, so I figured out how to do dishes in one sink. So well that when I did dishes the other day, I wasn't sure what to do with the extra sink...

If those 2 sinks become too confusing, I can always use my...Dishwasher!!

This is our very first dishwasher and I am very excited to use it. I have to buy some dishwasher detergent first, and of course I forgot on the weekend...

On either side of the dishwasher you can see one of the things I do not love about this new house - the atrocious cupboards! Especially where the dishwasher goes, I think they just sawed a hole in the cupboards big enough for a dishwasher. I really want to replace them because they're so gross but I think it will have to wait until we can save up enough.

Yes, this is a closeup of my stove, but see that button on the lefthand side in the middle, the one that says Clean? I'm going to try that one of these days. And I know I will appreciate it so much more after I have cleaned the old gross disgusting stove in the other house!

Once again, this is a bad picture, but it's our screen door going out to the backyard.

At our other house we had a front and back door, but only 1 screen door. So we were either really hot or had lots of bugs in the house. Here, we have 2 screen doors so we can get a nice breeze going through the house!

A big green backyard!

Our last house had a backyard as well, but if you went too far there was a pretty steep dropoff to a creek below, so we didn't really encourage Aidan to play back there too much. Here we have a nice big tree, a picnic table, a fire pit, a garden (complete with rhubarb) and plenty of space to run around! The only thing we'll need to do is put a fence along the back because the neighbours already have fences down the sides.

A Shed!

A great place to store all sorts of things!

A live-able, use-able downstairs!

Our last little house had a downstairs, but it was a dirt cellar which is really pretty gross. We had our washer and dryer down there as well as some storage, but I never liked going down there. The downstairs of this house needs a TON of work, but there are 3 bedrooms and 2 common areas plus a little storage room, a bathroom, a fridge and another room that has the furnace, deep freeze and washer and dryer - this is where our renters will live! It's not super nice, but we're not charging an awful lot - just enough to cover our mortgage payment, which is going to help out so much!

And last but not least, the ensuite!
Our bed is literally 1 foot from the doorway, so it makes those midnight bathroom runs a lot easier :) Note the beautiful wallpaper and those awful cupboards again. And the tile. Michael hates the wallpaper so much (it's in the bedroom too) it's pretty funny. I'm not saying I like it, just that I hate the cupboards a whole lot more!

At first whenever we went to look at the new house I would just get so depressed because all I saw was what needed to be done - gross cupboards, ugly wallpaper, old linoleum, everything in the downstairs - but now that we've moved in and I'm unpacking our stuff, it's okay. Thankfully the upstairs really is a lot nicer than the downstairs, and like Michael says, anything we do to improve the house will add a lot of value. We don't plan to be here for very long - maybe as little as 1 year, but who knows - so hopefully we can do enough in the house to increase the value so that we can afford to buy something nicer and newer next time.

Michael and Aidan played boxing on the Wii last night again and this time I was prepared with the camera. None of the pictures really turned out very well and they don't capture the whole bouncing, jumping and dancing performance very well, but I thought I would post them anyways, because it gives a rough idea :)

The Move

Well, we survived the weekend! There were 2 really great things that happened: first, Michael and I decided I should probably take Thursday afternoon off to pack, but instead, Al gave me the whole day off with pay! Secondly, on Thursday evening Bill called Michael and said that their realtor had a moving van that they had been using and that they had asked that we be allowed to use it as well! Both those things were such blessings and helped us out so much.

On Thursday we tried to do as much packing as possible, on Friday Michael and 3 of his buddies from work moved everything over to the new house and on Saturday I went over with a lady from church and did a little cleaning. We stopped by on Sunday and cleaned out most of what was left so now all that's left is more cleaning and unpacking at the new place. Our friend Pat said that he would do some touchups for us, but the closer I look at the walls the more touchups I see that need doing. And by touchups, I don't necessarily mean spots, sometimes it's whole walls, or a large chunk of one. Hopefully it won't be a problem. It's kind of depressing going in there and seeing how dirty everything is because it makes me feel like we were living in a pigsty!

Al told me he thought I was going to stress myself out so much I would go into labour - which would have been fine with me because today I am 37 weeks which is considered full term - but instead I just made myself sick. Saturday night was the worst of it and now I've recovered enough to be at work but I still feel yucky and have a runny/stuffy nose and not much appetite. I'm doing my best not to pass it on to Michael and especially Aidan. When I was pregnant with Aidan I got a really bad cold like this very close to my due date because I remember going to Save-On and buying oranges and chicken noodle soup and anything else non-medicinal that I could think of and hoping it would help!

On the weekend Michael traded in a whole bunch of stuff and got just enough credit to buy a Wii. We had to pay a little extra, but if you had seen Aidan's performance like we did, you would have agreed it was well worth it. I think the interactive concept of the Wii is pretty cool and Michael thought it would be interesting to try and also something that Aidan could do fairly easily as well. Since Aidan likes to play 'bad guys' Michael thought they should try the boxing game first and Aidan agreed. They got their controllers all set up and tightened the band around the wrist so that nothing would go flying (Michael says he's heard nothing but good things about the Wii, but he has heard of tv's and controllers being broken because people get a little too 'into' playing the game and don't tighten the wrist strap properly!), picked their Mii's (they call the character's that you use Mii's) and were all ready. It took Aidan a couple minutes to get the hang of it but pretty soon he was hopping around throwing punches, moving his arms and dancing around like a little goofball. Michael won both games they played, but literally just about lost to Aidan's energy and enthusiasm. We'll have to set up the webcam to see if we can capture Aidan's moves next time they play - it was very entertaining!

Who Knew A Dime Could Cause So Much Trouble?

On Sunday morning at 6:44am Aidan came in and woke me up, clutching his throat, saying 'I eat money!' I was still kind of groggy so I didn't really get what he was saying until he had said it at least 3 or 4 times and then I understood - Oh, you ATE a COIN! I woke Michael up but he wasn't sure what to do, so I got up with Aidan and first of all we figured out what he had eaten. I asked him what color it was and he said silver, so then I showed him a nickel, quarter and dime and he picked out the dime. Next I called HealthLink to see what they suggested. Aidan wasn't choking, wasn't in any pain or discomfort, could swallow his saliva and juice fine, but we were still advised not to feed him anything and to see a doctor within 4 hours. Since the only walk-in clinic open on a Sunday was open at 10 (and we would have had to go to the hospital for X-Rays anyways), we went to Emergency. I brought Aidan's LeapPad and some Superman figures, a couple granola bars, some juice and my book and we were out the door in 5 minutes. I wanted to capitalize on the early hour and beat the rush that I was sure would be there later on in the day.

Aidan did very well in the waiting area although he was not impressed that he wasn't allowed to eat anything. I'm sure he was starving! After we had been waiting in an observation room for a little while they sent us down to get an X-Ray which showed the dime had already passed through his stomach and was ready to take on the intestines. The doctor said he should be just fine, he could eat and that I should come back the next day for more X-Rays to make sure the dime made it through the intestines okay. Aidan was very happy to hear he could eat and promptly devoured one of the granola bars I had brought along. Even better, the whole thing took 2 1/2 hours (which for Grande Prairie is nothing short of amazing) and we were home in time for Aidan to attend his pajama party at church. He was worried about missing it because he was very much looking forward to it - I told him then maybe he shouldn't be eating money!

Yesterday we went back to get more X-Rays and discovered that the dime had passed through the intestines without incident but was still there, just waiting to come out. Aidan did a very good job each time he had an X-Ray, lying very still while they positioned him and took the picture. After each one he got a sticker which was the highlight of the hospital experience - no, that's not true. He was very enamored of the 'applegator' outside, so each time we came and went, we rode it up and then down to the parking lot. I wasn't sure what he meant when he first said applegator, because that's his word for alligator - though I suppose alligator and elevator sound somewhat similar.

On the way home he discovered a coin in his pocket and was playing with it. Then he said 'I lost my money mommy' and then really quick before I could say anything he said 'Not in my body, in my car seat' which almost made me laugh out loud. Needless to say we've been a little more pro-active in reminding him that only food goes in our mouth!

We still have to go back on Wednesday for more X-Rays to be absolutely sure that the dime is out of his system, but I'm hoping we'll be able to spot it in the toilet and spare ourselves another trip in. Yesterday we were there from 5:30 until almost 7. Aidan did a good job waiting but it's still a pain to have to hang around and wait. It seems like quite a big deal, but I guess it's better to be safe rather than sorry. The doctor that saw us last night thought it was kind of funny and was laughing with Aidan and the triage nurse that we saw last night asked if Aidan was the kid that had swallowed the dime (the paper just said foreign object) and I said yes, you heard about it? and she said she had been on shift Sunday morning and the nurses were talking about it which was kind of funny.

Sugar Monster

One of Michael's nicknames for me is Grinner McGee - I think with this picture Aidan has now officially inherited the nickname as well :)

I am very excited that it is Friday today!! Yay for the weekend! Although, with us moving, the weekend means more time for packing. I've had really good intenions every day this past week but I haven't managed to pack a single box. Aidan is scheduled to go over to his buddy Brooklynn's house on Saturday so hopefully I'm feeling good and can make good use of my time that day. Today I am officially 8 months pregnant and I sure feel like it. Nothing major, I'm just getting tired of lugging around this big belly and being tired all the time. I guess moving is the perfect distraction then :)

Last week and this week I made these really great muffins. Every time I make them they turn out wonderfully, so I thought I would post the recipe:

Blueberry Banana Oatmeal Muffins
Dry:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup sugar or splenda

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Wet:

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup oil

1 cup mashed bananas (3 medium)

1 cup blueberries (frozen works fine)

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Beat the eggs and mix in the rest of the wet ingredients in a small bowl. Pour wet ingredients into well and partially mix. Add the blueberries and stir to moisten. Batter will be lumpy. Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes (15 minutes if making mini-muffins). Makes 12 good sized muffins.

(Mom I think you'll probably have this recipe because if I remember correctly it's in the Northview Recipe Book)

I usually buy a bunch of bananas every week but we don't always finish them and then they sit around getting mushy and this is the perfect recipe for that. Last time I bought frozen blueberries I bought a bag of Europe's Best and the blueberries were tiny which worked really good. Let me know how they turn out if you try making them :)

Hagatha's Teddy

Today Aidan and I were in Superstore picking up a couple things and saw a little display of TY beanie babies and other animals, so we stopped to look at them. I had told Aidan that when my tummy got really big he could come and pick out a really special teddy for his little sister, and when I saw this little guy, I was pretty sure we had found the perfect bear.

His name is Busby and he's really little and very soft. Aidan agreed with me that it would be a good teddy to get for Hagatha, so we bought it. Here he is posing with it:

Sextuplets!

I was checking out MSNBC.com at lunch today and there was a story about this couple in Arizona who just had sextuplets either this morning or yesterday. If you're interested, the story is right here. I can't even comprehend being in that situation with 6 brand new little babies - it almost makes me feel like a slacker with just one - like nothing I would complain about would even come close to anything that poor mother has to go through! The most amazing thing, I thought, was that all 6 babies were healthy (between 2 and 3 pounds each) and didn't have breathing tubes and also that the mother was expected to make a full recovery as well. They said the babies were born at 30 weeks, but would remain hospitalized for another 8 weeks. The other crazy thing is that just last week there was another set of sextuplets born to a couple in Minnesota. I guess they're not doing as well because they were born at 22 weeks and are still in critical condition.

That really makes me thankful for the health of our family! We never had any health problems with Aidan (except for one thing that just sort of happened and then resolved itself), Michael and I are healthy and so far everything has been fine with Hagatha. It's definitely something you take for granted until it's not there anymore.

The Weekend

Finally on Thursday I started packing, but that only made me more depressed about the whole packing situation because it made me realize just how many boxes I was going to need for all our stuff. I kept collecting boxes and had a pretty good stash by the weekend so I decided to tackle the downstairs. Fortunately I was feeling pretty good and Aidan didn't mind hanging out downstairs with me or playing by himself upstairs so it worked out well. I found some pretty cool stuff down there too - a whole bunch of Michael's superman figures as well as a superman motorcycle and superman car and some of my clothes that I was saving for when I got pregnant that fit. Aidan thought the superman stuff was the coolest stuff ever, and Michael was excited that Aidan was excited, it was pretty cute.


All in all I was down there for about 7 hours on Saturday and boy does it look different! There are still lots of boxes and it's not as tidy as I'd like, but it's a huge improvement. I think if I put another Saturday in down there it should be ready for Michael to just move the stuff out of there. That still leaves the upstairs, but I'm going to slowly work my way through that this week, a couple hours a day.

On Sunday we had Aidan's friend Shaun and his family over. It was nice to sit and visit with people our own age while the kids played. Shaun is 4 and Ashley is 5 and they all played really nicely together. I couldn't believe how messy Aidan's room was afterwards though! Since all the toys were spread out everywhere I decided to pack them up instead of just cleaning them up. Aidan has sooo many toys, but everytime I try to go through them I have a hard time weeding out any. Maybe this way I'll see what he misses and what he doesn't and we can at least put some downstairs. Before he got too upset I told him I would leave a couple boxes that he could open if he asked - his cars and his action figures and he seemed okay with that. I've never really thought of him as spoiled, but I think he is to a certain extent. Pretty much anything I think he would like or that I want for him, he has - that's not necessarily a good thing either!

Michael had to run out to Future Shop that evening and so we all went to check out some fridges. We had one all picked out and were going to buy it, but then we didn't have the measurements of the 'fridge opening' in the kitchen and it was still early June so the salesperson told us we might as well come back later to buy it so it wasn't sitting around. That was fine, except we didn't know it was on sale until we checked on it a couple days ago and found out it had gone up $400! It was a side by side fridge with filtered water and ice and a little bit more than I wanted to pay for a fridge, but we had decided to splurge a little. Everything else was also really expensive so in the end we went with a standard freezer-on-top fridge. The weird thing was that the stainless steel model was on sale $100 cheaper than the white model, so we went with stainless steel which is kind of exciting. I think stainless steel looks cool, but usually it's a lot more expensive and I can't really justify paying more just because it looks cool :)

So now we've got everything we need - even cool polka dot material for curtains in the kids rooms!

Parenting

Aren't kids wonderful? Yesterday I had to stop at Superstore to pick up a couple things and Aidan wasn't too happy about it. I had my iPod with his music on it but he was still really whiny and when we got in the store he started yelling and crying - it was not pretty.

I decided to just try to get done what I had to do as soon as possible and hopefully he would finish his meltdown before I had to fight him back into the car. Isn't it embarrassing to have a screaming child in a public place? There's virtually nothing you can do about it and it seems like everyone is staring and judging you! I used to be one of those people too, but that was before I had kids. It's just something you don't get until you have kids of your own. I used to see kids that were acting badly or screaming and think 'Why can't that parent control their child?' but now that I'm on the other side, I understand :)

As long as no one says anything to me I'm usually okay, but last night there was one brave lady...she looks at Aidan and me and says 'Is someone having a bad day?' Well obviously! We don't look happy, do we? I just looked at her and said 'Thanks. That's fine.' How is that supposed to help the situation at all? I've never understood why complete strangers will think it's going to help a howling child to have a strange person come up and coo in their face. Anyways...I'm sure she meant well.

A couple months ago there was an article in my Chatelaine magazine about this mom who had an autistic child and the reactions she got from her child's behaviour when they were out in public. After reading the article it made me wonder how many parents deal with that on a daily basis and then have people make the situation worse by either being rude about it or saying something like that lady said to me. It was a very thought provoking article for me and made me think that I need to work on having a much more open mind instead of just dismissing things because of how they appear.

I think Aidan must be going through a growth spurt because after that whole fiasco he fell asleep in the car on the way home!

Stompede Weekend

This past weekend was the Grande Prairie Stompede and I was thinking of taking Aidan to a rodeo or something but the tickets were too expensive, so I thought we could at least check out the rides at the Midway. But by the time we had finished swimming lessons, running a couple errands and gotten home to have lunch it was already around 3 and I knew I didn't have enough energy left to take Aidan out to the rides. So Michael offered to take him and give me a little time to clean up the house, which was appreciated. Michael also took along the camera and got some good shots.

Daddy and Aidan
Aidan fishing for sharks....Caught one!!

Aidan was so good at catching sharks (he caught 14 over 2 turns) that he won himself a very large purple teddy bear. We're not sure why he chose the large purple bear, apparently there were lots of other choices, but he seems happy with his bear :)

This was Aidan's favourite ride. Michael said he wanted to go on again and again and again...

Michael said he always wanted to sit in the front car of the train

Waving at Daddy

Just chillin' on the train

He looks kind of worried here...

Less so here, but I remember last year when we went to the fair he really wanted to go on the merry go round but wasn't sure about going by himself so I had to go on and stand beside him.

Here's Aidan on the dragon ride, sitting in his choice of the pink dragon. Michael was not impressed with the choice of pink and told Aidan that usually only girls like pink :)

Look at that cute little face!

Today is a lot cooler than both yesterday and the weekend when we were up between 26 and 28. It's a welcome change and I hope it sticks around for a couple days. Last night Michael and I were making dinner and it was just too hot to have our one door closed (it doesn't have a screen) so we opened it and placed 1 mosquito coil outside and 1 OFF! lamp just inside and it worked really good, we didn't get any mosquitoes in. There were a couple buzzing around this morning, but I killed them off quickly.

Aidan's been having a pretty rough last couple days. I'm not really sure why - maybe he needs more sleep, maybe he's going through a growth spurt, I don't know! His 1 hour swimming lesson on Saturdays definitely makes him more tired and I should really start giving him a nap afterwards. On Sunday he was on the floor crying 3 times during Sunday School and then yesterday when I picked him up from Darlene's house he was happy one minute and flopping on the ground crying the next. He had to sit on my lap to eat dinner and was very sad and cuddly. I don't like it when he acts like that, but he's not generally very cuddly, so I didn't mind that part. Darlene thinks it might have something to do with the new baby coming and I sure hope that isn't the reason! The last thing I want is a newborn and a 3 year old acting like a baby! We'll just have to wait and see what happens though. Overall he seems pretty happy about being a big brother...and he's got lots of exciting stuff planned for the summer - moving, Mama coming to visit, the circus, daycamps...maybe he'll just be too busy to be a grump :)

It's Official.....

We're homeowners! How exciting is that? Now we just have to start packing and get everything ready for our possession date of June 20th. It's nice to have some confirmation before we go buy a bunch of stuff for the new house :) I had been looking through the classifieds from the paper and online, as well as keeping an eye on freecycle for anything we would need for the house - more specifically to furnish the renters rooms downstairs, and I found this king size bed with pine sleigh frame for $300! I called and left a message and then we called again last night and it was this newfie trying to make money for her ticket home. She said she wasn't holding it for anybody, the first person out there with the cash could have it so Michael rushed right out and picked it up.

This is our brand new (to us) house:

Michael actually rented a room from Bill and Bev (the people we're buying from) for about a year. His room was the window on the left, farthest from the front door.

This is the backyard and you can see that little tent thing - they're calling it a gazebo, which I guess it is. It's sitting on concrete blocks or tiles that extend all the way to the back door creating a nice little deck. The gazebo has 4 metal columns in each corner that you can just barely see and should be big enough for Aidan to play inside there with some toys and also for me to bring the playpen outside for Hagatha to play or nap in as well. The big window directly above the gazebo will be our bedroom and the smaller window right beside it is the window to the ensuite. I think both neighbours have fenced their properties, so all we need to do is put a fence across the back of the yard. I am so excited about having an actual back yard! Right now we let Aidan play outside, mostly in the driveway on his little tricycle and scooter, but we're not super comfortable with all that wide space and him out there alone, even with checking on him frequently. I've got all sorts of plans for the backyard - a swing set and a sandbox - provided I can find both at a reasonable price :)

Aidan was very much looking forward to Thursday evening because Michael had a baseball game at 6:30 rather than 8 and we had told Aidan he could come watch. We rushed through dinner, got a drink and a snack and his ball and glove in a backpack and headed over to the ball diamond. On Wednesday I had bought Aidan his own little Elmo camp chair which he also brought along. It was really hot yesterday, up to 26, and the evening wasn't much cooler. I was really glad I had brought a large drink and made Aidan drink a lot of it and wear his hat the whole time which he wasn't really impressed with. He tried playing catch with Jacob who is a little over a year, but spent most of his time climbing up and down some large mounds of dirt behind where we were sitting. The mosquitoes were really really bad and by the time we left at around 8, there were swarms of them! Aidan was pretty grumpy when it came time to go, but had a great time so hopefully Michael has some more early games we can go to - not that either of us (me or Aidan) cares about baseball. When we were at home relaxing on the couch Michael said something about the game and I said 'Oh, did you guys win?' and he said 'Yeah, we beat them down 14-7' which just goes to show you how much I know about baseball - or any sport for that matter. I probably know the most about football because I've absorbed so much by osmosis over the past 7 years :)