introducing baby shulba #2

yep, he or she looks just like all the other ultrasounds you've ever seen! ;) i thought it was funny when our technician said, "it's cute". the ultrasound tech said she WAS able to determine the gender which is great so we will be finding out the gender hopefully on may 11th at our next doctor's appointment!

hit

i bought my first watermelon of the season - it was a hit. go get it!

(and i cut it all up into one of these bowls...)

bubbles not in the bath...

chasing bubbles with friends = good times.

confession

am i the only person who looks at a restaurant's menu when i know that i'm going there for dinner that night? too much time on my hands maybe...

22 months

you know my fondness for my babycenter.com emails that i get monthly and now i'm getting 2 a month - one is about my toddler and one is about my pregnancy. love it. usually these emails are spot on. just when i'm wondering if something is normal, i get my monthly email and it tells all about whatever it was that i had been worrying about.

this month's email came this morning because ben is 22 months today (crazy!) and it was way off! It said, "Your toddler can probably hop off the bottom step of a staircase by throwing one foot forward and letting the other follow. But true jumping, where both feet leave the ground at the same time and then land squarely, is a skill that requires excellent balance and may take a few more months to master."

not so! ben is a jumping machine. if there's something to stand on that's above the ground, he will stand on it and then jump off. he jumps of curbs, off the bottom step, off the couch and ottoman. it's quite scary to watch actually because you're SURE he will break a bone and something tells me that this kid will break a bone one day unlike his risk-averse mother who has protected her bones all her life.

the other day, we had the top of the ottoman on the angle (as seen in this post) and ben was climbing up the lid and jumping into the ball pit. and while these videos don't have him "sticking the landing", he does make it sometimes.

like that i have price is right on in the background? this is what ben does when i watch this in the mornings.

(it looks like he falls off the side of the ottoman at the end but let me assure you that no babies were hurt in the making of this film.)

what happened to april showers?

yummm...snow...

gratitude (every)day

saw this idea today from another of my favourite blogs: make and takes. i love this idea for encouraging optimism - another take on could be to make a gratitude book. i love that the family is sharing the book as well so that they can always read each others' thoughts. very cool.

oh maternity...

i recently read an article about the top ten pieces to have in maternity wear. one of them was a "drapey sweater".

so the other day, i went to thyme maternity since it seems to be the only maternity shopping in both abbotsford AND langley. i was buying dress pants for the Tupperware conference that i was at this past weekend. while i was there, i saw a black drapey sweater. it looked good and i didn't have any black sweaters so i took it up to the till.

the woman behind the till said, "oh, i love this style - but i guess you can tell," motioning to her own drapey sweater that she was wearing. i told her that i liked the colour. she replied, "yeah - i got it at reitmans." hmm...all of a sudden, i wondered why i was buying a drapey sweater at thyme maternity for a ridiculous $45 when they had them at reitmans. i paid for my purchase and walked next door into reitmans. i found the sweater that was practically identical to the one i'd just bought except this one was only $26. almost a TWENTY DOLLAR difference!

i bought the one at reitmans and while i couldn't bear to return the one i just purchased minutes later, i waited to return it until today.

thanks to the thyme maternity lady for accidentally knocking some sense into me. :) i hope her boss doesn't read this post.

pack rat

i'm definitely not a pack rat. however, we have had a LOT of magazine subscriptions over the past 6 years of marriage. in fact, at one point, we were receiving 7 different magazines a month (car and driver, motortrend, men's health, women's health, shape, real simple, and explore). to spend $20 - $35/year on a year's subscription is SO cheap in comparison to buying a few mags at the grocery store each year. BUT these pile up pretty quick if you're not just tossing them after you've read them. but who tosses magazines after you've read them? no one. we had PILES of magazines everywhere after years of subscriptions (and now our list is made up of real simple, beautiful british columbia, and today's parent - but for awhile there was fit pregnancy and canadian family also). at one point, i implemented at magazine box for each magazine and said that once the box was full, we couldn't add to it until we recycled some. That was all the magazines we were allowed of each. but this seemed unfair because real simple is so fat and explore is too good to get rid of ANY.

where am i going with this? well, eventually, we got rid of all the car mags, most of the health mags, and i gave away my fit pregnancy to someone else who was pregnant. i plan on keeping all explore and today's parent but the real simple? i can't keep them all! i've totally pared down - don't worry - i don't have years of my subscription but i have the last half a year or so. (and every december issue since 2004 - i love re-reading those at christmas) i think i should just be passing these on instead of getting rid of them. do you want them? i would love to share them with you. they're too pretty to recycle. let me know and i'll save them for you!

btw, if you ever go outside or aspire to go outside more, this is the greatest magazine. it's canadian which i absolutely love and every article is SO well written. i read it cover to cover every month when we subscribed to it and we're waiting for tim's b-day so that we can be subscribed again as a bday gift! i highly recommend it for you or for giving as a gift. and no, i have not been compensated by explore magazine to say this! haha.

other peoples' kids do this?

the child's version of Keep Calm and Carry On...

this poster makes me feel so much better. though i guess buying it would negate my stand on the subject... (lots of other great ones here)

can i have one?

oh my goodness - this would have been the greatest asset to my bedroom decor of 1996-2000. if you didn't know me at that time, i had one entire wall of my bedroom collaged with magazine pics and words. i had all the flavours of Frutopia bottles on my dresser (it was a new brand at the time). i had a large penguin (from Earls) and giant Coke bottle piggy bank. there were black bar stools (but no bar...). it was random. and this bedspread would have been the coolest.

featured on my fav: odeedoh.

too many options

does anyone else go to specific grocery stores for specific things? i always buy my meat ($10 packs) and bulk peanut butter from pricemart, my jam from superstore (pc brand), and my frozen blueberries from costco. these are the things i am picky about. i just get the rest of my groceries wherever i happen to be. but on the days where i've run out of everything? three stores with a toddler seems ridiculous.

first bubble bath

i guess i'm not one for bubble baths myself so i've never put ben in his own. then the other day, we accidentally made a few bubbles in the water and ben thought that was great so last night when he said, "bobo, bobo", i added a bunch of soap to the water. instant good times.

toys, toys, toys

we can go for days in which ben doesn't play with ANY of his toys. he dumps them out and kicks them around maybe or he'll play with them for 2 seconds when tim or i sit down and try to get him engaged. the other day, matt and katie came to our place early in the morning so that we could drive them to the airport. katie walked up our stairs and said, "wowww. there's a LOT of toys here." we hadn't cleaned up all the scattered toys from the previous day! this can lead to many thoughts of, "why do we have this many toys if all they do is make a mess?"

yesterday morning, for the first time in a LONG time, ben played with his toys. he played in his kitchen (despite me having removed all his food for dumping and kicking purposes). he played at his toolbench for at least 10 minutes! he was in the ball pit for awhile. it was lovely to see him PLAYING on his own!

at one point, he went into his room and brought out this book that has a little container attached with magnets in it. i had these magnets on the fridge for awhile (but they're supposed to stick in the book) and then i'd put them away. he found the book, worked at getting the plastic open and then put the magnets on the fridge. it was an activity that lasted at LEAST 8 minutes!

okay, so maybe this sounds like a crazy post - that i'm all excited about ben playing for 8 or 10 minutes at a time. but if you have a 21 month old, i'm hoping you understand what i'm talking about - it's not just my kid, is it? longer playing periods are coming, right? fingers crossed.

week 15

i've been following this blog for a few weeks. she's a few weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy and i'm enjoying her weekly photographs with the fruit or vegetable the corresponds with her pregnancy. and her clothes are so cute. makes me want to go shopping.

this week, i'll be 15 weeks along and baby shulba #2 is the size of an apple. crazy.

not that simple

do you read the magazine, "real simple"? i've had a subscription for a couple years (christmas present!) and it's such a pretty magazine - it's sometimes hard to refrain from ripping out pages to "save". old collaging habits. they always have recipes in them and the cover often says things like, "meals in 5 ingredients or less" or this month's says, "15 minute dinners: prep and forget it". to a slacker in the kitchen like myself, this never fails to make me think, "ooh...that sounds good!"

when i get to that section in the magazine, these recipes ALWAYS are a ridiculous amount of work (in my non-chef like opinion) and they include ingredients that i'm never going to go looking for in a store. in the current issue, the recipes include items such as Gruyere, bulger, Arborio rice, and fennel bulbs for example. even if i had the time to comb my grocery store for the ingredients and then stand by the stove, waiting for things to "evaporate" or become "soft and creamy", i could never make these recipes.

so if you enjoy a challenge in the kitchen, trying new things, and savouring the subtle hints of this and that in your arugula salad - these recipes are for you! (rach, i know you recently had a lovely arugula salad somewhere and this last sentence is really aimed at you - i bet you make meals from this magazine, don't you?) if you like to make something in 5 minutes and aren't looking for hints of anything - you and i should swap recipes. ;)

it's tough being (almost) 2

ben's latest thing is picking up containers of toys, dumping them out, and running through them. i am not a fan of this stage so i've picked a battle. picking up things you dump out. seems like a logical enough battle, right? turns out, ben is fairly stubborn in this area. he has spent some time in "time out" for not listening to mommy and not picking up his toys. i try to help him but he will pick up a toy and then throw and laugh. back to time out.

so yesterday morning, ben was whining and whining for something and we thought he wanted blueberries. tim got the blueberries out and gave him a little bowl of them. ben screamed in frustration and dumped the berries out on the ground. i gave him a stern (ha) "no dumping out your food! let's pick these up and mommy will help you." it didn't go over well. off i hauled him to time out (which is in his bedroom). after a minute, i went and got him. i reminded him why he was there, asked for a "sorry" which he gave and asked if he was ready to pick up his blueberries. "yeah!" was his answer. but in reality, the real answer was no when we got back to the blueberries. i sat him down next to them and i picked up some and made a little pile for him. he wouldn't pick them up. so i walked away while he sat there. when he tried to leave the spot, i took him back, sat him by the berries, and told him to pick them up. then i went and continued to unload the dishwasher.

(i normally wonder about parents who take pictures of their children who are doing something they shouldn't be doing but after SO much time spent sitting here moaning and groaning, i couldn't resist. sorry, parents, for judging you.)

well, it turns out this is a MUCH better way to doing a time out! making him sit by the thing he has to pick up gives him all the opportunity in the world to pick up his stuff! a much more logical consequence. ben chose to sit next to his blueberries and cry. he moaned. he kicked them a little with his feet. he dumped the berries that i'd picked up for him out of the bowl. he cried some more. but when he started to scoot himself away, i went over, placed back next to the berries and said, "you are in time out until you pick up your berries." and then walked away.

i started to wonder if ben would be sitting there all day. i wondered if this was worth the battle. it seemed to be torture for him but after a good 10 minutes of sitting and crying about spilled blueberries, he picked them up. when he started, i went and helped him. when he was done, i gave him a hug. it was SO super nanny.

oh, parenting - why must you be so trial and error?

retraction

after posting such an opinionated post about name choosing, i spent the 45 minute drive from white rock to abbotsford thinking of boy names last night. i realized that my cohen example isn't really what i meant. i guess i don't need the nickname to be it's OWN name...it just needs to be an acceptable sounding nickname. (and cohen has been overruled because it's a little too different a name to go with shulba...imagine always having to spell both your first AND last name) also, i don't feel as strongly about my "rules" when it comes to girls names. so yes, just some extra thoughts on my previous post.

all about the nickname

i thought about baby names long before i ever had a baby. when we had ben, benjamin was the one and only boys name that tim and i agreed on. if this next baby is another boy, we are in trouble for names.

i would imagine everyone has their own criteria for name picking. my personal criteria is, "does it sound okay with our last name? (therefore doesn't start with s and doesn't end in a)", "does it work as an adult name as well as a child's name?", and most importantly, "does it have a good nickname?". To me, it is all about the nickname. In life, your name WILL be shortened (unless it's already one syllable) so it's better to plan the nickname right away instead of leaving it up to someone else. I was always Rebecca - no short forms until about grade 5 when some friends overheard my brother calling me "bec" at school. the nickname stuck and i've been bec from then on. i was lucky. this is not such a bad nickname. but think about how cute it would have been to be calling me "becca" as a little kindergartener. i missed out on that one. ;)

so i like a longer name that can be shortened. we will call this kid by the shortened version but when he is older, he can use the longer version for business associates or on his business cards. yep - very important. ;)

so this is my naming obsession. give me a name, i shorten it to one syllable and then decide if i like it. i'd like to give some examples here of names that i like but i don't like shortened...but i don't want to offend anyone. hmm... like cohen. i quite like this name but i want to then call him, "co" and that just doesn't work for me. start going through boys names that you know and you will begin to realize why our list was so short. if only i wasn't so crazy about the nickname - this would be way easier.

21 month old humour...

ben loves to go to the playground behind our house - you've seen it in many photos. on one play structure, he always runs to this hole and sticks his head through and shouts before turning around and going down the slide.

i showed him these photos the other day and he laughed so hard at this photo. after first few times of looking at it, i thought to video his reaction. here's ben reenacting what's happening in the above photo:

now he watches this video and laughs.