24 weeks

Lately, I've been struggling. I am feeling HUGE. I've gained way more weight this pregnancy than I hoped to, even though I am eating ridiculously healthy. Like ridiculously healthy. I eat more veggies than anyone I know, but yes, do allow myself a burger and poutine once a week. ;) The only thing keeping me sane and grounded is the following mantra. "I can only control what I put in my mouth. I can't control what my body does with it."

Right?

Right.

Plus, I am building a healthy baby. I wouldn't risk the health of the baby for anything, so I am being very balanced and reasonable with my diet.

It's just hard to go from being the fittest I've ever been to feeling out of control in my body. I can't exercise like I want to because I damaged my back muscles during my last pregnancy and have to be careful to make sure that doesn't happen again. Plus, I'm exhausted. I know it's an excuse, but it's a tiredness that is impossible to explain. I walk a lot, but it's not the same.

So, yesterday I was 24 weeks. So I decided to take some pics to compare how I am now to how I was at the same time with Gavin. It was so nice to see that I am still smaller! I wore the same shorts, but don't have that shirt anymore. (The beige is Gavin, the grey is Baby #3)

So yup. I build big babies. Yup, I am due July 12. Yup, I'm positive it's not twins.

In the blink of an eye...

I know it sounds cliche, and I thought I was doing well, but it hit me that soon my baby girl will be going to Kindergarten. Now, I'm not nervous about Kindergarten, as I do work half days and I am away from her for half the day now, but do you know what comes after Kindergarten?? Grade 1. A whole day away from me. A whole day away from me that when I ask her, "So how was today? What did you do?" her answer will be "not much" or "nothing". A whole day during which I won't know what goes on. A whole day in which she'll be free to spin tales about having 5 birds as pets. That concept breaks my heart. I know she'll love school and I know she'll do well, but I want to be there.

Good thing it's a whole year away.

But wait. Wasn't it just yesterday that I laid my eyes on this sweet, innocent, beautiful baby girl?

Oh wait - this was yesterday. My big girl all grown up. My sweet, innocent, beautiful baby girl.

 I swear. I'm going to blink a few more times and it'll be her graduation.

My sweet, innocent, beautiful baby girl. Love you to bits, baby!

There may have been crickets chirping...

I just finished parent-teacher interviews. Now, I don't usually blog about my students for confidentiality and all that jazz, but this was just too funny not to pass along.
I work on reading with a grade one student every day. On Thursday, I laid out three books - "Budgies," "Cats," and "Mice" and told the child to pick a book. He got all excited and chose "Budgies" because he had 5 budgies at home. He went on and on, talking about the budiges and their names and the colours and the tricks that they do and their cage and where their cage is in their house and how if you open the door, the budgies will fly out and on... and on... and on... Literally over 5 minutes, telling me ALL ABOUT HIS BUDGIES. Get my point? The boy liked his budgies.

So fast forward to parent-teacher interviews. I sit down and I'm telling the dad all about this child's success and I say, "So, did *Walter* tell you about his new book today? It's about budgies and he was very excited because of the budgies you have at home."

Dad - "Uh... we don't have any birds."

Me - *Blink, blink.*
         "Uhh... oh. *Walter* was telling me all about them."

Dad - "Nope. No birds. We talked once about maybe getting one..." We both stare at *Walter.*

Poor *Walter* was 87 shades of red. Busted, my friend, busted because of budgies.

___

Just a warning parents - you NEVER know what stories your kids are coming up with at school!

M'boy lost his 'noids.

I know this blog has been awfully quiet lately, but we have been busy. On Thursday, G finally had his surgery for his adenoids. Hopefully this will be the solution to all his breathing and speech problems. We were at the wonderful Children's Hospital again. We tried to make him feel better about wearing what he called "a dress" by telling him it was a really cool costume. That made it acceptable to him. The nurses laughed when we called the name bracelet "a watch" but again, whatever made him happy! He was actually really mad that his monkeys both needed watches too, but eventually he got over it.

As we were waiting to go into the operating room, we distracted him by getting him to push his monkeys around in a shopping cart. Things were fine until it turned into a high speed chase and he wound up giving himself a bloody nose. You know, that's a proud parenting moment - as the surgeon enters the room to discuss the impending surgery, I'm frantically dabbing his nose, trying to get the bloodflow to stop. Sigh.

Last year when G had his surgery, he was screaming as they took him from me, he screamed as he went under and screamed for 2.5 hours when he woke up. I was soooo worried about that part of it.This time, I talked to the anesthetist and we decided to try putting him out with a different drug. He happily wheeled his shopping-cart-o-monkeys into the OR and that was it.

When they called us from the waiting room into the Recovery Room, I was happy that I couldn't hear him screaming from the hallway. The nurses kept saying how bad his recovery was because he was crying and kicking, but Chris and I just kept reassuring them that this was nothing compared to last time. He only cried for about 45 minutes and I didn't walk out of there with bruises, so thanks for all your prayers!

The next few hours were spent giving him lots of cuddles and trying to convince him to drink some juice. His main complaint was about the IV. Like mama, like baby.

The night was rough. He still had a local on his mouth and throat and so that wasn't bothering him, but he kept crying about his IV and the fact that he had to stay in a crib. We got maybe 5 hours sleep in total.

However, the next morning, he was ready to go home. It wasn't until later when the local wore off that things became fun.   For the first 5 days at home, all he did was wander around whining and crying. He only drank and didn't eat. It was awful. It's been a week tomorrow and he's finally acting like himself and eating again. Yay.

Interesting fact  #1 - One of the side effects of adenoid surgery is awful, foul, unrelentless bad breath for 7 - 10 days.

Interesting fact #2 - being pregnant can heighten your sense of smell.

Now, if these two interesting facts happen to collide, for example a young boy who has his adenoids taken out and his mother happens to be 22 weeks pregnant, it can present an awkward situation. Every time I try to cuddle him, I wind up gagging. Now I know you might think I'm exaggerating, but it's true. Chris had him in the van two days ago and left him in there for a few minutes while he ran an errand and when he opened the van door, even Chris complained about the smell in the van. Here's hoping that clears up soon because it is unbearable!!

Seriously though, thanks for thinking of us, friends. I really appreciated all the texts and messages. It went really well, and here's hoping we are done with surgeries for a long, long time!

Cuddle Muffins

I walked into the livingroom the other day and saw this.

My heart melted. Chelsea, loving on Gavin -- Gavin, tolerating Chelsea.

Long February Weekend

Although we didn't do anything exciting for Louis Riel weekend, we did have fun at home. We took advantage of the unusually warm February weather to hang out outside.

Chelsea has mastered riding her bike without training wheels. She's conquered turning, starting, stopping, riding up the bump onto the sidewalk, everything but attempt to drive up the driveway.

We are really lucky to live within a 5 minute walk of 3 different parks. This "twirly slide park" is one of our favourites.

 Then, we'll often drive out to Schanzenfeld to hit up my school because there are 3 big playstructures there, so if the kids get bored of one, we simply move to another one. It's a lot of fun.

So, although we didn't go on any major hotel stays or shopping trips or anything like that, we still made it a family weekend.

Valentine's Cookie Pops

Chelsea adores Valentine's Day. This year, she wanted to make cookie pops for pretty much everyone she knows. After cookie dough pops, she asked for cherry chip cake pops.

 Me, being the stellar, fun-loving, over achieving mother that I am, of course said yes.

So here is Chelsea, giving a pretty poor attempt at a thumbs up. Then of course, she needed a break.

 Decorating all the cake pops was a very tedious, time consuming job. It was really fun to work on with both the kids however. I love that G was old enough and hand enough patience to help!

Tiff, over at TLP Photography, whipped up some super cute photocards to pass out as Valentines.

The finished product - individually wrapped cookie pop Valentines!

Monkey see...

Gavin is growing up so fast. He idolizes his big sister. As I've stated before, she is patient and kind, usually. Here, Chelsea is playing Wii Dance Party and G, well, he isn't even watching the tv for the moves. He usually watches C instead. It's cute really.

 I had asked Chels to pose for a picture because she just looked so cozy and warm and grown up and melt-your-heart kind of cute. Well, she hadn't even said "Cheese" yet, and we could already hear G come running, yelling, "Me too. Me too."

 Well, I obliged because I kind of think this kid is melt-your-heart kind of cute too.

 I walked into the livingroom and saw C sitting like this and ran to get my camera. As soon as G realized I was taking a picture, he had to do as his sister...

Stinkin cute, right?

Love.

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident... -- Captain Corelli's Mandolin"

Here's to many more years of being entwined together, babe.

Boy in a Box

The best day ever for my kids was the day our rangehood microwave died. It may have cost mommy and daddy a pretty penny to replace, but it came in a sweet sized box. I threw in some pipsqueaks and the two of them have had a blast.

 However, we did have to have a little chat (again) about the fact that although these markers are washable, they are NOT to be used as facepaint.

Kind of ironic...

I've been so busy working on converting my blog into hardcover books that I've actually neglected my current blogging. Be prepared. Turning my blog into a book has really made me think about my blog and what I want to document.

So some things will change. I will blog more. It will be picture heavy because I don't scrapbook and I rarely print photos, so it's a nice way to keep some photos. I will tell more stories of my kids that I think are sweet/hilarious/sad/uplifting or heck, even boring, just so that I have these memories written down.

So for now, I'll leave you with these pictures. These two are are my life. They are so much fun and they are developing such a great relationship. It really makes me wonder how a 3rd is going to fit in with these two monkeys.

Chelsea has been so sweet and patient, for the most part, and I stress patient. Gavin is really big into copying EVERYTHING his sister does. She has started having such good conversations with him. They are now sharing a bedroom and sleeping in bunk beds. I hope this fun relationship continues!

Purse = Giant bag of money

So I had a hair cut tonight and I was greatly anticipating it. Not that I was doing anything drastic, but I was trying out a new hairdresser and let's be honest, I haven't had a haircut in many months.

I hopped in my husband's car. It's a little black Golf that happens to be a standard. No problem. I'm very comfortable driving stick.

So I park on the driveway, make the effort to shut off the lights (because I've left them on in the past) and I walk to the door of the house. As I'm opening the door, I turn back and look at the car to be sure the lights are off.

*Items in the diagram may not be to scale.

Happy the lights are off, I turn back to the door to go into the house when it all starts to process. "...The..... car..... IS... MOVING!!!!"

In what feels like super speed, I drop my purse and RUN towards the car. Apparently, at that moment, I believed that I was consumed with super human strength and/or that Chris' little Golf was indeed just a little toy car, because I grabbed the door handle and tried to dig in my heels and stop the car from rolling down the steeply inclined driveway. This is when everything starts going in super slow motion and I start chanting some weird "no.. no... nonononononono!!!"

.

(Oh, and yes, there was car heading my direction.)

That aside, at this moment as the car is gaining speed and going down the driveway, eventually bumping onto the road, I realize that, unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to stop the car (shocker - I know).

Somehow, with the help of God, I wrench open the door and throw myself in, slamming my arm into the doorframe in the process.

Now, I am in the car, still continuing that weird, "no.. no... nonononononono" as I slam on the brakes. Finally, after what feels like a million moments, the car stops rolling and I look to my left and there is a car, also stopped. Now, granted, I'm pretty sure this person has seen the WHOLE scene play out and has had plenty of opportunity to slow down, and laugh and laugh.

But then, as I'm sitting there, heart pounding so loudly that I can't think, I realize that I need keys to start the car to pull it back up out of the driveway. In a panic, I think they are in my purse, which as you remember, is way up by the house.

So I sheepishly try to get up out of the car and realize that the keys are on the seat between my legs, so I start the car and pull it back up the driveway, praying that I won't stall it with my stupidity. I manage to pull it together, pull the car into the driveway, put the E-brake on, shut off the car and walk back to the door.

Seriously, did that JUST happen? It was like the movies, I swear. It was a scene from the movies.

Now, don't you wish you were my hairdresser who got to hear the play-by-play, filled with adrenaline as I struggled to catch my breath and burst into fits of laughter as I kept replaying the scene in my head? C'mon.

It was just like the movies. 

Recipe for Support

It was one of those situations that just hit home. Here I am, expecting my 3rd baby after being blessed with two healthy babies, and a couple in our church gave birth to their first baby - a beautiful boy diagnosed with Hypophosphatasia. These two parents are such an amazing example of faith, courage, determination, love and faith. The story of this family will affect many.
Now we know this couple, and Chris and the dad go way back, but we aren't really friends. We go to the same church and will sit and talk, and I think they are great, but we definitely aren't close. But sometimes, you just feel a nudge, a gentle tug inside and a little voice whispers, "You can do something."

I heard that gentle voice and let it simmer for a couple days. The church was going to be holding a bake sale fundraiser for them and I planned on donating a bunch of baking. But I kept coming back to the thought, "What if it was us? What would I want people to do?"

I had messaged the mom and said, "What do you need? Cash? Gift cards? Meals? How can I help?" and her response was just so sweet, saying that whatever we wanted to donate would be very appreciated.

So, I thought, "If I'm baking cupcakes anyways for the bake sale, I'll advertise trays on FB."

Now I've sold cupcakes in the past and usually max out at around $300 in sales. I didn't even ask Chris. I just put a little blurb up on my FB and Amanda's Creative Cakes status and was overwhelmed with the response. I watched as people ordered tray, after tray, after tray... As much as I wanted to raise money for this family, I never expected to sell more than $500 of cupcakes. As the night went on, I finally had to stop the sale when I realized I needed to bake over 700 cupcakes! Yikes!!

I wound up making 840 cupcakes and every one of them sold and requests were still coming in. In case you are wondering what you need to make 840 cupcakes filled with peanut butter, white chocolate cream cheese, or cookie dough, here's a rough breakdown of what I needed.

20 cakes mixes

20 cups flour

20 cups sugar

1 bottle vanilla
3 bottles of butter flavouring
10 lbs of Crisco
64 cups hand-sifted icing sugar
60 eggs
6L sour cream
1 jar of peanut butter
8 bricks of cream cheese
3L whipping cream
1L milk
5 cups butter
180 balls of cookie dough
8 boxes of pudding
62 foil trays 
51 amazing customers

Once Chris realized how much money we had raised, he made the comment, "Man, you should have sell cupcakes to pay off our camper."

I laughed. Somehow, I don't think this picture of our 1989 camper

would raise as much money as the story of beautiful little Deklyn.

So again, I say thanks. The response was unbelievable. Thank you so much for helping me support this family.

Belonging

So I've been contemplating this post for a while. Belonging. I often feel completely out of place.

Wikipedia describes "Belongingness" in this way. "It is the human emotional need to be an accepted member of a group. Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, or a sports team, humans have an inherent desire to belong and be an important part of something greater than themselves. The motive to belong is the need for 'strong, stable relationships with other people.' This implies a relationship that is greater than simple acquaintance or familiarity. The need to belong is the need to give and receive affection from others."

I don't feel like I belong at my job right now. It's a new, intense, isolating position - I'm not in a classroom and I'm not really part of resource. I don't really work with anyone. A lot of the people that I talked to moved to a different school. Being half time, I don't have a lot of time to socialize. Again, I get that this is simply where I am in life right now, but that doesn't mean it's always fun. I'm finding it hard.

Then I've been struggling with friendships. I know it's the stage of life I'm at right now. It's tough to have "couple" friends because of the age of our children and bedtimes and such. Also, my husband doesn't talk much, which can make things kind of awkward. I'm an outgoing person and he would be perfectly happy to never leave the house again. This will be further complicated when we add a baby into the mix. Again. I do understand that this is the stage we are at, and maybe I just need to loosen up - my kids won't always have a meltdown if they aren't in bed on time.

And then there's this...

I feel this sums me up lately. Over the past couple years, I feel like I've built walls. I'm scared to get hurt or rejected, so sometimes it's easier just to close up and turn away. Then sometimes I'm sad that I'm not someone's "person." You know, that person that you can't wait to text or call when something good happens, or that person that you call to vent or cry to.

Now don't get me wrong. I have some good, good friends - friends that make me smile deep down and friends who love me. I just need to learn to reach out more, instead of waiting to be reached out to.

So, be prepared people. As I'm reaching out and expanding and stretching myself, I just might call you for a coffee date.

Happenings.

- Back to work tomorrow. Yikes. We are so out of routine. We like sleeping in and wearing our pajamas all morning. We try to stick to the usual bedtimes, but we've been having some good afternoon naps that tend to push bedtimes later and later.
- Totally love watching my kids' relationship develop with each other. Chris and I are almost 100% sure that they like each other!

- Gavin's speech is growing by leaps and bounds. We are doing a lot of speech therapy with him and it is paying off. He has become quite the little chatterbox, repeating everything he hears. Chelsea has had to tell him a few times, "Gavin, you don't need to say everything I say!" I love it! He is scheduled for another surgery in March, this time to remove his adenoids, in another effort to improve his hearing and speech. The ear, nose and throat specialist said this will help eliminate his mouth breathing and his need to constantly be drinking.  

- So the news is out that we are indeed expecting #3 due on July 12. We are very excited. I'm slightly terrified about gaining weight, I'll be honest, but it'll be fine. I seem to have really popped over the holidays and finally put the ol' stretchy maternity pants on. Sigh of relief. The only annoying thing is that they never stay up. I'm constantly trying to hike them back up where they belong, which is annoying when the top of them rests under your boobs. It's not a graceful act.

- I've been feeling really good - I haven't been sick once. It's amazing actually. I have finally gotten past the "tired-beyond-all-comprehension-can-i-nap-for-17-hours-a-day" stage. I'm hoping this means that I will feel a little more like myself.

- We bought a van. An 8 passenger van. Man, oh man. Somehow, I woke up one day and was a 30 year old, almost mom of three, who is going to drive a mini van. Yikes. Wasn't I just 17, playing basketball, worrying about my Calculus exam?