november 2009

november 25

zoe NOT jumping in her jolly jumper

apologies for the lack of blogging. between my part-time work, schoolwork, finding daycare [more on that later] and trying to get everything sorted before we leave for christmas on dec 10, life seems to have been getting away from me.

so... the daycare saga.. i have had daycare lined up for zoe for almost 6 months. she'd even been going occasionally to get her used to being there and then my daycare provider told me she's moving in december. so now i have 3 or 4 weeks to sort out an alternative plan before i leave for england. 26 phone calls later, there are only 3 spots available - all of which i'd be uncomfortable leaving zoe at. fortunately, we live in a very close knit community and every time i speak to someone i seem to get another lead on someone who might be starting an in-home daycare so i'm 'sure' something will turn up. if you're reading this kim [my boss] try not to worry! it's amazing how time consuming phoning all these people has been. i hate the phone at the best of times and i've been trying to squeeze my calls in during naptime which seems to be getting shorter and more unpredictable by the day.

all my exercising resolutions have really taken a turn for the worst in the midst of all the chaos - not helped by the fact that even when it's not pouring, the wet leaves on the ground make rollerblading near impossible :-( i really should move back to california, i'm a hopeless winter person. i like to be in my PJs the minute i get in. this wasn't so bad when i was working full-time and i was getting in at 6pm, but now that i'm home from picking up the children by 3pm, i'm thinking that MIGHT be a little early to have a bath and put my PJs on. thank goodness for PJs that could almost pass as regular clothes!

wow, that was a lot of complaining. on the positive side, i've done a whole lot of christmas shopping online and have made a start on my christmas cards.

zoe's signing still amazes me everyday. yesterday the sign for 'airplane' arrived, as did the sign for 'fall down' - fortunately it was a tower of block rather than zoe herself which was falling down!

i'm still very exciting about england. sascha has me in training for going back. apparently, i have to practice using the word 'trousers' instead of 'pants' in readiness. i guess he's had some experience of being ridiculed for this sort of thing. ironically it was probably by me!

november 15

is it just me, or do british people not talk as much about the weather any more? they just talk about what's on telly - mostly x-factor these days. who are these mysterious twins everyone speaks of? they have inspired people to make youtube videos of hitler's dismay at the twins still being in. [mum don't watch the video - there's a lot of swearing - i didn't watch those bits i promise ;-p].

i love this baby stage - there has been lots of signing in the past two weeks. it's so great to have a proper glimpse at what she's thinking. she's laughed at me wearing a hat [hood actually, but I'll give her credit], signed rain, asked for 'more eat', showed me that an airplane was flying over us and by signing 'more' and flapping at her open bedroom door indicated that she wanted more of anything except for a nap. i'm so sorry i didn't pursue signing that little bit longer with aly and toby. she has also been heard to verbally say 'mama'. to begin with, this apparently meant 'more' not 'mom', but it seems to officially meant mom now.

having said all that, babies are a LOT of work. i had 5 other children in the house the other day and i was enjoying a nice cup of tea, doing my schoolwork, and wondering why it all seemed so easy - and it dawned on me it was because zoe was asleep! i guess one baby is the equivalent of about 6 other children!

last night i got a whole night's sleep. hooray! we put zoe down about 9.30pm and i didn't have to feed her until 6am. she then went back to sleep until almost 9.30am. my back is aching from all that lying-in-one-spot for hours at a time. what a wonderful feeling! despite having managed to drop one of her nighttime feedings recently, i would usually have had to feed her 3 times between 9pm and 9am. poor sascha missed half of it - he and toby had to be up at 5.15am to get to toby's hockey game in vancouver [where toby-the-goalie got man of the match - or whatever they call it in hockey].

november 8

aly finally couldn't deal with detangling her hair any more and got her hair cut. as always, it looks great. however, this time i'm a little concerned because they obviously put some work into curling it - something which i'm not about to do every morning. sascha took her to get it cut and has been no help whatsoever in telling me what they did since he spent the whole time on the man couch!

i'm in the midst of a washing machine crisis - the lock on the door has gone. naturally, we were just a month over our 1-year warranty [they don't make things like they used to]. fortunately, sascha found a sub-clause which said if we registered online we got an extra 3 months added to our warranty. a week later a man came to tell me that yes, the door lock was indeed broken like we told them on the phone and he could now order the replacement part which will take 1-2 weeks. arrrrgggg. at this point in my life, i have very little patience for waiting around in laundrettes with my seven or so loads of laundry a week. such is life...

now that all 3 children are over their fevers/sore throats/swine flu[?], i managed to do very well exercise-wise this past week. i managed to squeeze in sessions on wii active and wii fit, as well as some walking, rollerblading, swimming and a hint of dancing at salsa-tots. here's me doing particularly badly on my wii fit balance board steadiness test [can't think why]....

november 1

poor wanda the hamster has been laid to rest. she lasted a very admirable 2.5years - especially considering the number of death defying feats she completed. aly was devastated when i first told her, but when i started talking funerals she remembered that she was missing her favourite tv show and the mourning period was officially over.

aly and toby are old enough now that they don't tend to say too many silly things but earlier this week, i was sending aly downstairs with some dinner for dani [sascha's niece who lives with us during the week while she goes to university nearby] when she said: mom - it's nice the way you make dinner for dani - it's kind of like instead of a compost bin we have dani.... except for the egg shells and stuff.

zoe's steps have been getting much more balanced this week. she still won't take more than about 3 steps at a time but she can stop between each step now - rather than just staggering towards someone and hoping they will be ready to catch her! she can now sign 'milk' as well as 'more'. frustratingly she won't sign milk to me when she wants milk though - she still prefers to whine and make a grab for me - which of course ends up having the desired effect!

a jedi, a tinkerbell and a pirate

we had a great halloween. zoe wasn't too impressed with trick or treating so i brought her home early and we answered the door to the 100 or so children. zoe got really good at waving goodbye to each kid [usually after i'd already closed the door, but it's the thought that counts!]. she got very excited when she heard the doorbell and started waving in anticipation.

we were a bit worried about zoe with the fireworks since aly and toby have never been that keen on the noise. to play it safe we stayed in the car to watch, but when zoe started to get bored we got out and she didn't mind at all. she seemed to think the noise the fireworks made was people clapping because she was clapping frantically along each time they made a popping sound.

after trick and treating we headed over to the adams' family for their halloween party. i guess being the adams family you really have to embrace halloween. thanks for the party guys!

the adams family's graveyard

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