the problem with running shoes

my sorry excuse for lack of exercise this month is the fact that after my pregnancy, my runners no longer felt good. they rubbed and gave me blisters. my hips were all sore after walking. i needed new ones.

so last night, i finally went out to the running room at 8pm. i went in wearing my current runners and told the girl there exactly what i just wrote. i took off my socks and shoes and rolled up my pant legs (which wasn't a pretty sight...) so that she could watch me walk. after a few times of walking across the room, the woman exclaims, "well your feet sure have changed since your pregnancy - those shoes you have now are way off." well there you go. apparently, i no longer pronate very much. who knew what pregnancy was going to do to my feet?

it's taking awhile for me to get to the reason for the title of this post: the problem with running shoes... so this saleswoman brings our three boxes of neutral shoes (as opposed to what i used to wear for feet that pronate aka. roll inwards). the first pair are ugly nikes. but they have memory foam in them so they feel pretty good. weird, but good. then the next shoes are pretty white and purple asics. not as good as the nikes. next, bright blue and white sauconys - also not as good as the nikes. shoot. now i'm going to have to buy the ugliest option! you would never pay this much money for shoes that you didn't like the look of in all other types of shoes but with runners, you have to go with the ones that feel best! and unfortunately, these were them.

but i'm feeling pretty motivated to get to the gym - so that's worth the money in my opinion.

(mine is dark gray with pale mint-colour accents - i couldn't find a pic of them exactly)

ben's second ever photo shoot...

thanks ang and domi for the impromptu shoot! the photos are awesome. who knew bedtime could look like this?

my go to protien

ever since i found this recipe, i've been using chick peas at least once a week. it seems to be an acceptable protein to tim so that means that i don't get around to thawing out meat for dinner, i throw a can of chick peas into the spaghetti sauce or whatever and it's still filling. so easy.

and lately, my go-to lunch on the go is throwing an egg in the microwave for a minute, toasting an english muffin and slicing up some cheese. egg mcmuffin. yum.

i'm all about no time meals. but maybe tomorrow i'll remember to thaw something out.

a ben series: flash

i have a lot of blurry photos of ben because i don't use my flash. when i do use my flash, there's this little orange light that comes on as the camera focuses which causes ben to fall forward and close his eyes. if i do wait long enough for him to come back up, he usually keeps his eyes closed. it's pretty funny to see in real life but here are a few flash photos...

oh ben.

learning to love again...

the first time we used a gps was when we borrowed my parents' for our ontario trip in the fall. unfortunately, we had an early mishap with it taking us a crazy way to my aunt's through gravel roads when we could have just taken the highway. once you lose trust in your gps, it's a difficult thing to regain. for the rest of our trip, i was sure we were going the wrong direction...

tim and i got a garmin gps for christmas and not a moment too soon as i begin heading all over the lower mainland for tupperware parties. tonight i wove through the maze of mission and found the house i was looking for - a house i would have NEVER found without the gps. i think garmin is gaining my trust back. i'm loving this thing!

sneak peek...

i woke up saturday morning and wanted nothing more than to forget about the fact that i'd said i was going to paint. it was a slow start to the day and we got over to the home depot around 2pm. we picked "porpoise" as our colour from the behr collection. (if you click on that link and go to the behr webpage, there's a little pop up saying "announcing the 2010 design and colour trends" and that room in the pic is porpoise!) during the 3pm nap, we filled holes and worked on all the floorboard and ceiling trim.

today i painted two walls while time continued on the ceiling trim. oh man, it's a great colour. thank goodness we forced ourselves to get going. the more we painted, the more we exclaimed how much we hated the original colour. so we still have a couple walls and the hallway left but give us the week and we'll get some photos posted. any tips for places to buy drapes?

our morning chat...

have you already been here? craft hope for haiti - check it out.

polaroids...

i found this site yesterday...downloaded the program...and now i can turn all my photos into polaroids. you watch them slowly develop before your eyes. so cool though i haven't quite thought of it's uses...

step one: paint

today i watched a little "take this house and sell it". we are so candidate material for any of those makeover shows. our living room/dining room is "cappuccino" - classic "sell" colour. we have barely anything on the walls because we've been planning on painting since we moved in...4 and a half years ago. we have white ektorp couches...well, dull white. three year old white. our coffee table/side tables are from superstore. my attempt at a little colour was red, five years ago. two sad red curtains and red lamp shades that tim hates. and i've come to dislike as well. all this said, all the W network makeover shows are for the "greater toronto area" anyways. they're missing out.

i watch a lot of decorating shows. i read a lot of similar blogs. it's not like i can't figure out what would look good in our living room. but it's so low on the priority costs. is there ever a good time to buy new couch slipcovers? or curtains? augh. but every so often, tim will make a comment about how ugly our place is and i freak out because i feel like he's saying i can't decorate. i CAN decorate - it just takes a little money. i think i have this block because i want to make it all over at once. really, i need to just start and go piece by piece.

today i got sick of the blank walls and the cappuccino. so i taped all the doors and floorboards with painters tape. and i will be buying the paint tomorrow. maybe this weekend it will get going...

and ben turned 7 months...

oh seven months. we're more than half way to one year. unreal. favourite moment of seven months so far: laying in bed between us in the morning, ben reached one little hand up to touch his daddy's face and one little hand up to touch my face and then looked back and forth between us smiling. too sweet. we're loving this little boy.

in all the cafuffle of a busy weekend, no "seven month photo" was taken on the actual day. but we did spend some fun time in a box on the day before:

and some sad time in the exersaucer the day before because i was baking and trying to get out the door without a post-nap cuddle. thankfully the tupperware measuring spoon fixed that.

happy 7 months ben boy!

not eating

while i know the feeling of not being hungry when sick, today was a day with only one bottle for ben. one. that one bottle was actually 3 different bottles given to him an ounce at a time here and there. at a couple different points in the day, i also managed to give him some water in an eye dropper and some apple juice/water mix in a sippy cup. and between all these feedings and explosive diaper changes, i was googling "baby dehydration". nearing the end the day, i'm thinking that if he doesn't eat an entire bottle tomorrow morning, we'll be off to the doctor's office. all the vetran moms out there may be shaking their heads and snickering at me but i've given this sickness thing a few days now and i'm new. i need confirmation that all is well.

family sick day

my attempt at daily blogging fell by the wayside as we had a busy weekend with friends and family and then at about 2am on sunday morning, i lay awake in my bed for a few hours. i didn't feel so well. i thought maybe i'd just taken too many advil, trying to get rid of the headache that i'd had for the day. so when i threw up at 4am, i thought maybe that was all there would be. i'm sorry to say that it was not all there would be. "at least it's sunday and tim won't be going to work so that he can look after ben in the morning," i thought to myself. and then tim got sick in the morning. and there was no one left to look after ben. so ben kindly decided to take a 3 hour nap in the morning. he must have gotten the vibe. poor little guy. unfortunately, when ben woke up, it was apparent that the parental care was lacking. we called in back-up. my parents showed up around 3pm and took care of ben, washed dishes, made us chicken soup, and put ben to bed. phew. we were SO grateful. before my parents left, my mom checked on ben only to find the he'd thrown up in his crib and needed to be changed. and so began ben's sick day. he would wake up in the night and just give little moans. he had a very sad, low energy day. when he was awake, he sat on our laps and chewed his soother. ben was asleep longer than than he was awake today. finally, around 5:30pm we saw some smiles and a few jumps in the exersaucer. he had a happy bath and went off to bed. and i think we survived our first family sick day...

zip

last night, i signed up for a 2 week free trial for zip.ca - the canadian netflix. i know that my friend, laura, does netflix and thinks it's great. the idea in short: they mail you a dvd that you want, you watch it then send it back in a postage paid envelope that they provide and they send you the next one. but all this mailing - won't it take forever to get movies back and forth? so that's why we're trying it out. tim's like, "why don't we just download these movies?" hmm...

traveling with baby at 7 months

now that ben can sit up on his own, he can sit in the grocery cart. my relatives (hi sarah & laurie) gave me a mat-like thing that you drape over the seat of the cart with a little pillow and toys all attached. ben sits in his seat and can take it all in. i haven't heaved my stroller out of the trunk to go into a store since december! and shopping in winners with a cart is so much easier! who knew? then i went to the dollar store yesterday and they have the baskets with wheels. i plopped ben into this little basket and rolled him around the store. i laughed to myself the whole time because he was having such a good time rolling around. when he's 10, he'll be so tired of hearing me say, "i used to put you in these baskets and roll you around." but man, it was cute. i'm loving the new transportation.

sharing

so i read a lot of blogs. when i log into my google reader in the morning, there are usually about 100 posts to read. i don't often read them all - i sometimes "mark as read" but throughout the day, if i get a moment, there's always something to read. so one blog i mosts often mark as read now that christmas is over, is one pretty thing. they gather DIY projects from all over the net and put it in one post. they post many of these a day. it's a great way to find other blogs that you might like. but now that i'm feeling less crafty and more tupperwary, the only posts i look at are the printables. so i'm sharing with you (in case this blog isn't on your reader) - lots of cute things to print off other peoples' sites for free. my personal fav for this particular post:

my favourite part of the day

is when ben wakes up happy from a nap and just sits with me on the couch making happy sounds and looking around. today i thought i'd take a photo.

augh! what is happening to my hotmail?

so the other morning, i logged into my hotmail account and there were 60 new messages. hmm... they were all delivery failure notices. i opened one and read the message i was supposedly sending and it's obviously spam. AUGH! how did this happen? so i immediately changed my password. a day went by, the account seemed fine. then this morning i log in and there's one delivery failure notice from last night at 2am! oh no. what's going on? what should i do? lose the account? but i've had that one since i was 19. 8 years. i can't change it! computer people? help me out?

a bit about me...maybe more than you wanted to know...

thanks to andie for nominating me for a Beautiful Blogger award. i don't know who started giving these awards or when you're nominated, if you ever "win". but someone thought my blog was worth an award and i'm appreciative.

part one of the honor - seven things about me:

> i love heinz ketchup. if you tried to trick me with a different brand, i would know (but i'd be too polite to say anything then you'd yell, "it's not really heinz! i tricked you!" and i'd say, "i could tell! i knew!" and you wouldn't believe me) when mcdonalds changed their ketchup packets (you may not have even realized but i did), i would go through the drive thru then go inside to get the ketchup out of the pump. i put ketchup on turkey, roast beef, kraft dinner, etc.

> i hate cutting my toenails ever since i had an ingrown toenail. i try to rarely cut them which means that at any given time, my toenails are either wickedly long (eww) or beautifully painted and pedicured.

> i've never broken a bone or gotten stitches. in other words, i've never taken any risks.

> i didn't start drinking coffee until march 2008. i needed a warm drink at recess.

> i love tom petty. and the heartbreakers.

> i love infomercials. if there's a good infomercial for something, i want it. my mom bought me a "eurosealer" one year for my birthday because i talked about the commercial so much. and currently, my favourite infomercial is the jack lalanne juicer.

> i love being a mother way more than expected. who knew how great this would be?

part two of the honour - nominate seven other beautiful bloggers:

alyssa of row by row

alexis of the daily dilullo

cam of beautiful and dirty, dirty poor

hannah of hanners? latte?

sara of simply sara

heather and whitney of rookie moms

it was hard to choose seven but these are a few of my favs in no particular order. maybe you'll enjoy them too. check them out.

backwards - not forwards

i set ben down on the corner of this carpet and when i turned around, he was over by the package of baby wipes. so as it stands now, ben can push himself backwards and it works especially well on laminate.

a big order...

remember the time i went to my first tupperware party? haha...

fyi - i'm putting in an order on thursday, january 14th for anyone who was wanting to get in on the modular mate sale but not planning to have a party. when i put in single orders, the shipping goes way up but this way you'll still only have to pay $3.95 per order.

some other sale items to take note of:

set of 4 dishwashing brushes 50% off - $7.50

the large carry-all: great for your 10kg bag of flour or storing your dog food outside - $32.50

cereal storer: keep your cereal fresh for over a year! $13.00

modular mates are all 40% off. last spring, i'd decided to build up my mod. mate collection one rectangle at a time so i started with the biggest one. i paid $35. right now, you can get the whole rectangle SET (5 containers) for only $70!

email me if you want to get your order in for january 14th. rebeccashulba@gmail.com

book of the month

in keeping with my resolutions, i've been reading. here is january's book already under way:

julie powell's Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession.

so far, it's totally depressing and a lot of great detail about meat. i cannot believe this is the same julie who wrote julie and julia. her life seems to have spiraled out of control after mastering the art of french cooking. i'll let you know how it goes.

french vanilla creamer

way long ago, i bought french vanilla creamer for a special occasion. and now it's a staple in my fridge. it just makes coffee so much better. and especially since i buy the low-fat version, it must be crazy chemically, hey? sigh. i admire those naturalists eating things from the earth. not me - bring on the chemicals. augh.

the food saga continues

a little over a month since i gave ben his first taste of solid food...and we're still not eating more than a few spoonfuls at a time. in fact, it seems as though we're regressing because he's started gagging when he has something in his mouth and he does this wicked little shiver too. what the heck? anyways, it's too funny to keep to myself so here's a little footage. pears. you'd think that would be good. (and for some reason, when i'm taping, i can't seem to remember i can only tape horizontally...tip your head to the side...)

if you need some inspiration...

to get your home office organized...read this blog. i want to go right out and buy some pretty file folders...in fact...i might.

and 2 shows make a come back...

at my wedding, there were a lot of survivor jokes...it was my fav. and about 15 seasons ago, i stopped watching. but i just saw a preview for heroes vs. villians season 20 of survivor and the show is BACK on my list - for colby alone. i'm so excited he's back.

then there's american idol. i think i watched only 2 seasons. but ELLEN is a judge! how can i not watch? they've sucked me back in just like they knew they would.

will you be watching?

media overload

sometimes ben is subjected to this. today i made a better effort at not being on the computer when he was awake. we rolled around a lot on the floor. lots of giggles. much better than reading blogs or playing bejeweled. this may be an addition to my list of ny resolutions.

one fan

i think ben is going to enjoy having his mom receiving so many boxes in the mail these days...

he's in there again tonight as i write this...

tim just dumped him over and he's laughing his head off.

consonent sounds

i know i've blogged about this before but babycenter.com sends me weekly updates about where my baby might be developmentally. there have been many times when i'm saying to tim, "i wonder if this is normal?" in regards to ben doing something and then the babycenter email comes and talks about exactly what i was just worrying about. it's been a great mom tool. last week, i got ben's 6 month 3 weeks email. they said that babies this age say a consonent/vowel sound over and over - like ma ma ma or ba ba ba. this is their beginning to make words. i said to tim, "ben's not making consonent sounds - he just squeals." well ben must have gotten the memo because a couple days later, he started saying "gu, gu, gu" (short u sound like in up) over and over. when you say it back to him, he gets really excited and says it more. gu gu gu. that's all i've heard since he woke up this morning. i'm really enjoying it. just think...the beginnings of talk. crazy.

ben helps me make muffins using my quick chef. he was pretty keen on rolling that honeydew.

counting sheep

i am one of those people who has trouble turning my brain off at night when it's time to sleep. sunday nights used to the be the worst sleep because i was back to work on the monday morning. thoughts about school would keep me awake and then when i finally did fall asleep, i'd dream about school. now that i've signed on as a tupperware consultant, some nights i cannot turn off my brain.

so what to do if you can't fall asleep. my theory is you just stay in bed. it doesn't matter if you're not sleeping - getting up won't help you sleep. my dad's theory is after 30minutes of non-sleep, get up, write down what you're thinking about, and when you go back to bed, you'll sleep better. well, after many a night of laying awake until all hours, i have tried getting up instead. but then i stay up for hours instead of getting sleepy.

what do you do when you can't sleep?

if you too are making resolutions...

here's a free printable i came across to help keep them at the forefront of your mind. how cute is that?

resolution update...

while i remembered to floss yesterday...i went to the store this morning and forgot my reusable bags. sigh.