a model in the making

ben had his first photo shoot in our living room yesterday evening. ang and domi taught him how to pose.

tim: "he actually looks a little too comfortable posing like that. i kind of wish he was crying a bit."

keeping benjamin warm between shots.

sunday anecdotes

so if you get together with us...probably anytime soon...you'll find that normal conversation is hardly possible.  we try - we really do.  but we're about to inturrupt you if our child makes any noise.  after you tell us something unrelated to the baby, we'll try to engage but it might come out with a question like, "why do you think ben's neck is peeling?"  yesterday, my dad said to me, "i'm still thinking about ross's sermon this morning.  aren't you?"  and i replied, "i'm thinking about my baby."  this is one all-consuming process.  and i really had no idea.  but hopefully we will quickly learn how to become contributing members of society again while having a baby.  i just thought i should warn you.

it was ben's first outing yesterday.  all the way to white rock so we could go to church.  he slept for the 45 minute car ride but woke up walking into church.  i figured he'd go back to sleep since he'd just fed 45 minutes earlier.  he sat politely through the singing (tim says, "this music is too loud.) and when the baby dedications began, he let out a big scream.  i tried not to panic and tried to look like a competent mother as i reefed him out of his car seat and tried to speed away.  i dropped the diaper bag up the aisle.  his hat fell off.  but i got him out fairly quickly.  :) 

as it is every sunday night, last night was pizza night.  ben monopolized our time of course so we somewhat ate in shifts.  i was holding him while i ate my dessert.  when i was pregnant, i had food stains on my stomach all the time.  what can i say?  i spill.  now that i have a baby, he took the wrath and ended up with some ice cream and rhubarb strawberry crisp on him.  thanks ben.   

so now our first week is coming to an end, it feels as though this little guy has been with us forever.  in a good way.  and we like him a lot.  

dad's first: father's day

ben gave tim a book called "Daddy and Me".  it's about building something with tools.  classic.

family first: walk

mom's first: bathing experience

benjamin kindly took it easy on me by being fairly still and quiet for almost the whole bath.  and i didn't lose my grip once.  :)

parenting thoughts: then and now

pre-benjamin...post-benjamin

> i said, "i'm never going to sit in the backseat of a car with my baby."...i said, "i better sit in the backseat with ben to make sure he's okay on the way home."

> i rolled my eyes at parental discussion of bowel movements...i regaled everyone over dinner last night with the details of my baby's latest diaper change.

> i thought it was funny when parents wanted to tell you how smart/strong etc their child is...you should know that ben is already holding up his head and can hold is own soother in.  

> i didn't think i'd be one to give many details of my labour to people who didn't want to know...i described the experience to our friend/downstairs tenant with way too much description.  ;)

> i wondered why parents didn't want to let their baby cry it out...i tried to leave ben for two minutes and couldn't.  it was too sad.  

tim and i are loving our little boy and are muddling our way through the first week trying to figure him out.  so far, he likes his carseat and being in the car, enjoys his vibrating chair, gets the hiccups often, and loves to look at the light coming in the windows.  he didn't cry in his first bath or when the public health nurse stripped him down and weighed him today.  he cries inconsolably for awhile around 11pm at night and we haven't figured out why yet.  but we're having a great time getting to know him.  

and then there were three...

for the last three weeks, i have walked into our baby room before i go to bed. i walk around and say to tim, "where's our baby?"

and then last night? i walked into our baby room and got to see my little guy in his crib. unreal.

more thoughts coming soon...

final thoughts on pregnancy...

so in case you're not up to date on facebook, tomorrow morning i have an appointment booked to be induced at 7:30am. i'm supposed to call at 6:30am and see if they have room for me because if not, they'll tell me to call back later. i'm crossing my fingers for no one else to be having babies tomorrow morning. :) then i go in and my doctor uses some kind of gel (is this too much info?) and i sit around for awhile and if it doesn't kick me into labour, i go get lunch then come back and we do it all again. this can happen a few times. if it doesn't happen, next is breaking my water and then, if still nothing, i go on an IV. so while i think i'm having this baby tomorrow, it sounds like there are a lot of factors (the main one being they don't have room for me tomorrow) so i shouldn't be getting too too set on it.

but how can i not? i have been pregnant now for 41 weeks and 3 days. that's 290 days of pregnancy. to reminisce a little is to be expected, is it not?

when i took my first pregnancy test, i didn't really read the instructions very carefully. i didn't use it in the morning, as suggested, and i didn't pee on the stick for the whole 5 seconds...maybe just 1 second. and the result was that i was not pregnant. fine with me as it would have meant i'd be due in june when school wouldn't be finished yet. a couple weeks later when i told my friend kara this story, she looked at me as though i was crazy and said, "umm, maybe you should do another test." that was october 10th. i thought, "yeah, maybe." but didn't. it was the weekend of matt's wedding, family was out from ontario, it was a busy weekend. that night, at the rehearsal dinner, my aunt carolyn asked me if there was anything that i wanted to tell them this weekend...implying pregnancy. i innocently said, "nope. not pregnant." but the next morning, the morning of matt's wedding, i got up at 8am, peed on the 2nd stick in my two pack of pregnancy tests and it was positive. i climbed back into bed with tim and said, "so i'm pregnant." since i hadn't even told him that i was taking the test, he was shocked and then we were giddy. we kept it a secret all day and enjoyed the wedding with the secret we had.

i'd have to say my feelings on being pregnant after the initial surprise were mostly apprehension. we felt unbelievably blessed and humbled that getting pregnant had not been difficult for us as it can be for so many couples. but now we were really pregnant and the idea of giving birth was horrifying. breastfeeding still makes me nervous. just having a baby around sounded like i was going to be giving up a lot of freedom. yes, we wanted to be pregnant and had prayed and hoped for it to happen but now that it was here, it was overwhelming. i was super forgetful, emotional, and very exhausted. i gained excessive weight in the first few months and while i was very glad to be "showing", there was a steady stream of commentary from friends and colleagues and strangers in line at the grocery store on how huge i was. but all in stride. second trimester, my energy came back and i felt back to "normal". in january and february, i still jogged around in p.e. class and played soccer at recess. i went to step class every monday night and kept up and usually took a dance class on wednesdays. and then one day in late february, i played a little soccer and afterwards, i could barely walk. all my joints were unbelievably sore. i realized that it was time to start slowing down a little. this was a difficult part of pregnancy for me - the feeling of laziness...forced laziness. i have to say, with all the feelings of nervousness and the diminishing ability to do day to day things, i ashamedly didn't have the best attitude about being pregnant in my second trimester. i wasn't a pregnancy fan. and where was this great skin i'd heard about anyways?

but one night, this growing baby stopped fluttering around and started moving. long periods of slower movements sliding across my insides. i cried. it felt terrible. but i started to get used to it. and even though i was getting bigger and bigger, i felt more aware of this being a baby and not just "weight". when i got to the date where the baby, if it came now, could survive, i was so happy. i saw great examples in some of our friends of how great a baby was and how they could still do lots of things that i thought i'd be giving up when this little guy came. and i finally "got used" to being pregnant. it wasn't so bad - i was making a baby. it helped to have quite possibly the most supportive husband ever who encouraged me everyday. i don't think i could be a husband to a pregnant woman - that is a whole other journey.

and now, 290 days later, we're ready. haha. i guess that word, ready, should be in quotation marks but i was . but God had it right when he made the gestation period 40 or so weeks because you need that long to get your mind wrapped around what's going to happen. my brother asked me today (on the phone as he's in arkansas for fire academy until july) if knowing that i'm going in tomorrow is scarier than it just happening randomly but as of 11:18pm the night before? i'm still feeling like, "sure, i can do this." here we go!

cutting peppers...

i have always cut the centre stem out of a pepper then cut it open down the side to pull out the remaining seeds.but then at my tupperware party, the tupperware lady just cut off all the sides of the pepper with no finicky knife stabbing the top.
i feel like, why is anyone cutting their peppers the first way? why didn't i think of this myself? then the thought occurred to me...maybe everyone IS cutting their peppers this new way. what have you been doing? and can you be converted?

favourites...

well after last night's sytycd episode, i predicted the voting off of tony and paris. and off they went tonight. but after seeing jonathan and karla's solos, i felt like it's an obvious vote for next week. i can't stand how smilely jonathan's dance was last night. (plus the see-through white shirt put me off but i know that's not his fault.)

overall, wasn't last night's show so good though? this is a fantastic group this season. or do i think that every season? my favourite couple is jason and blond girl who danced bollywood style. and hey, if we have judges like adam and nigel on either side of mary's screaming? i can handle it.

cracks in my feet?

i see people in sandals sometimes who have terrible cracked heels. they just look awful. and i wonder how it is they have not gotten themselves a pedicure as soon as those cracks appeared.

all of a sudden...I HAVE CRACKED HEELS! i've never had them before. what has changed? why did this happen? what can i do about it?

yesterday and today i have just been putting heavy duty lotion on them but they still are looking terrible. AND i just recently had a pedicure so i'm definitely not due for another one anytime soon. i can't give up sandals - it's warm out!

hmm...

on a pregnancy note - since that's really why you're here reading this - i walked into the library today and the woman behind the desk says to me, "are you ever going to have that baby?" i logged onto facebook here at the library and my friend from PDP who is due june 24th posted photos of her baby, born yesterday. i'd like you to note that i have held it together and am not crying sitting here...but i should probably get out of here pretty quickly. haha. oh wait...too late.

three days

i think i was focused too hard on june 4th. i thought i was would have a baby by then...or the next day. but now that it's sunday and i'm feeling quite disappointed and huge, im realizing that due dates are silly. only 25% of women have their babies by the due date.

yesterday morning at 6:30am, i thought that maybe labour was in its very beginning stages. this may sound funny to all who have had a baby but you know...it hasn't happened to me yet so i'm not sure what to expect. but needless to say - it wasn't. i then spent the whole day thinking...maybe it's coming today. and i also spent the day mostly on my own in my house because tim worked on his truck all day in the garage. quiet time alone to think makes the waiting much much longer, right?

i should have taken the 4th and added a week right away from the beginning. so my new due date? june 11th. :)

"nesting"

someone asked me a couple weeks ago if i was doing lots of cleaning since i was at home all day. "that's how you know you're nesting," she said. i told her that i guess i wouldn't be nesting because i was definitely not doing much cleaning. :)

i do day to day cleaning - you know...dishes, bathrooms, sweeping. tim does lots to keep the house in order. in fact, there are no chores that are mine alone. we take turns...or tim cleans it all. ;) but when it comes to more detailed dirt...it can get left for awhile.

i get random inspiration to clean sometimes. like, i'll open the freezer many, many times and ignore all the peas that fell out of their bag one day. but all of sudden, the next time i open the freezer, i'll pull everything out, throw away the bad stuff, and wipe it down. and i feel good about a clean freezer and admire it everytime i open the door. somehow that good feeling isn't enough to spur on a cleaning frenzy. much to tim's dismay.

being 9 months pregnant doesn't help. i don't know who these cleaning/nesting pregnant women are. last night i had washed all the sheets and was making the bed in our spare room. it took me so long to make...huffing and puffing, swollen feet throbbing. i came out of the spare room crying. it makes you feel awfully useless to not be able to do simple tasks. (umm...and i hear pregnant women are emotional too) tim suggested that maybe he would work from home the next day and be able to help around the house for the day.

so today, between emails, phone calls, and other such work, tim cleaned like no other. all our window screens were cleaned and i cleaned some of the sills. (he did the sills i left behind) vacuuming, washing floors, kitchen. i did the bathroom though. :) he put together our thousand piece ikea dresser for the baby's room. mowed the lawn. swept. sigh - our house is SO clean...it's wonderful. and it makes me feel so much more ready to bring a baby in here. i guess that's why people clean the house pre-baby. not just moms do it...apparently dads can do it too. it's called...nesting. :)

baby update?

i was at the doctor's today.  he cannot believe how low the baby's head is.  he says that it takes a fair amount of labour for some women just to get the head to where it is already in my pelvis.  this is a good thing.  but who knows if that means he's coming tonight or next week sometime.  

the heat isn't working for my poor ankles either.  these are some fat feet.  :)

my analysis of my sleeping and dreaming

an FAQ i kind of mentioned recently was how i have been sleeping - and the answer is still the same...pretty well. i go to bed much later because i sleep in and sometimes even nap but pretty well nonetheless. i have attributed it somewhat to my sleeping habits previous to being pregnant. i woke up often in the night, usually to roll over, even when i didn't have a huge stomach. so if you're used to waking up many times a night, then pregnancy doesn't really change how you sleep.

i read an article in wondertime (a magazine recently mentioned in another post) about sleeping during pregnancy and since i'm here at the library again, can quote it. "the more times a person wakes in the night (and by the last trimester 97% of women wake at least once says the National Sleep Foundation) the dreams she recalls." so if you have spent any time with me at all in my life, you'll know that i always have some random dream to tell you about. and i guess it's because i wake up so often in the night that i have that many more opportunities to remember my dreams. when i wake up from an especially strange one, i have to think about it and replay it in my mind a few times before i try to go back to sleep - otherwise they're all forgotten in the morning. soif you've heard that pregnant women dream more - or you dreamed more when you were preggers - it could be that you always dreamed that much and it was just your erratic sleeping patterns that began helping you remember the dreams.

the earliest dream i can remember telling my mom was when i was 3 or 4 years old was when a stone gremlin on a fountain came to life when we drove by it in our volkswagon rabbit, jumped off the fountain and chased us. i was screaming to drive faster but it caught up to our car and jumped on it and then i woke up. as a grade school child, i remember my mom telling me, "you must have made that up." haha. i have a dream to tell tim every morning. when i carpooled with sally to agassiz everyday for 3 years, she often heard them too.

ANYWAYS - the article went on to say that "studies have shown that only 20% of the dreams we remember are "good" or "happy" dreams. The rest are fraught with anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, guilt, and confusion." wow. i would say most often my dreams are not any of these. they're just there. however, i'll leave you with a little portion my dream from the other night...

i have my baby and it's super tiny. like...the size of a hotdog bun. he's wrapped super tight in a recieving blanket and tim is holding him. he says to me, "what am i supposed to do with him?" and i said, "you can lay him down anywhere because he can't roll." so tim tosses him onto the couch. horrified, i tell him that he needs to be careful because newborns are fragile. but i check the baby and he seems to be okay because he's wrapped so tightly in his blanket.

umm...i guess that's...fear? anxiety? i didn't seem too worried about it in the dream...but maybe i should be worried...for tim's sake. haha.

baby shulba?

just joking - this one isn't ours.

but doesn't tim look great with a baby?

a shout out to ryan and heidi and little baby braedan who must be so much bigger now since this picture was taken in april. it's fun to have friends go before you in the whole child-bearing process and then be able to question them intensely afterwards to try and prepare. :)

the last childless weekend?

the nicest rest stop i've ever seen.

picnic time...

the mighty fraser river

alexandra bridge

a bridge built in 1936 for vehicles -
the original bridge was for wagons on the goldrush.

i heart SYTYCD

"i'm a dancer. it's what i do."
- david "sex" soller

oh the judging makes the show. i'm realizing that's why SYTYCD canada didn't work for me. i love these judges too much. great auditions. yay for two hour episodes. can't wait for vegas. and weekly thursday night blogging.

are you watching?

ramblings of a monday morning

this morning i woke up earlier than normal to drive tim to work as he is currently working on the truck in our garage. i thought ahead and brought a book along so that on my way home, i could stop at starbucks and sit in the sun and read while drinking a coffee and eating a scone.

because tim and i have decided that there is no more eating out/coffees/feeding our boredom with food, we have been reduced to using only giftcards that we might have previously aquired. i was given a $25 giftcard to starbucks at the shower my students' moms threw for me on my last day and i have been savoring every latte i buy with it. but as i quickly run out of money on it, i decided today to try my first ever starbucks coffee - nothing special...just coffee. and? it was good. (jonny is thinking "umm, of course it was.") i used...ahem...two packets of sugar but overall, a positive experience for a non-strong coffee drinker.

people at starbucks in the morning are mostly having "meetings" (maybe that's rude to put that in quotations...my dad is one of these people i'm sure...) okay...people having meetings or girlfriends with strollers getting together and some retired folk. the retired people often want to chat and as i'm boasting this very large stomach, there's always something to chat with me about. i've had more conversations with strangers in the last month than maybe my whole life. this morning alone, three. and because my dad taught me not to answer questions with one-word answers, they're quite extended little convos. a few elderly gentlemen wanted to tell me about their grandkids today. one told me that he wishes for me a baby that, at 4 months, sleeps from 8pm to 9:30am every night - like his grandson. wouldn't you know, this is also what i wish for. :)

after coffee and scone, i headed to the library. i know i've posted about this before, but i love our public library. it's large with lots of natural light. the magazine rack is extensive and there are always computers free to use the internet. now that i'm home during the day, tim takes his work computer to work with him and i have no computer. i know people used to live like this and i'm not complaining (yet) but i do appreciate the internet use in the comfy chairs at the library. you know...to post ramblings on a monday morning.

a magazine that i almost always have to read the library because there are never any old copies to take out (i'm assuming because it's a popular magazine) is wondertime. i've been reading it for years pre-pregnancy even though it's a parenting mag. articles are all about creativity with your children; intentional ways of helping them learn. every photo throughout it is beautiful and the cover has a matte finish. (i love a matte finish) if you live in the US, you could have a subscription for only $13. In Canada, add $12 more in US funds. oh it's worth it, in my opinion, but i'm waiting until my babe is at least a year before beginning to invest. if you have toddlers though, go check out this magazine at your library because i'm sure you'll appreciate it.

the sun is shining and even though it's only 10:30am, it's already warm outside. a good breeze is stirring up the branches outside the windows of the library and i know that soon, i will feel a little guilty about being inside so the ramblings (though there are more floating around) have come to an end so that i can go read a few articles about jon and kate, and the latest on baby sleep routines before i head home.

quote of the week

while watching my stomach move and shake and bulge with baby shulba, tim says, "it's so alien-like it's gross." hahaha. but it really is. you should see this action. the baby is way too big to be in there anymore...

free sounds good...

did you get your free iced latte at tim horton's today?

i stopped on my way to the school (to get my mat-leave-type papers) to get one and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. but of course, since it was a small, it was gone in a few sips.

then, i guess mcdonalds thought they should have a little iced latte battle. there was a sign saying "free iced coffee" and my car just pulled itself into the drive through. i got a vanilla one and it was wickedly sweet. i guess i should have had regular.

then on my way home from langley, i thought, maybe i'll hit one more tim hortons. it wasn't as good as the first one but nice that it was free.

yep, i make the most of these things. haha.

FAQ

1. when are you due again?
my official due date is june 4th. the longest i'm allowed to go over that is 10 days so the latest date possible? the 14th.

2. do you have the baby room all ready?
we have a carseat...so we can get the baby home. we have a crib...so somewhere for the baby to sleep. what else do we need?

3. how are you feeling?
pretty good actually. besides getting up 6 times a night to go to the washroom, i'm sleeping pretty well. i'm happy to be done work so that i can nap during the day as well. haha.

4. do you know if it's a boy or a girl?
yep, it's a boy. well, it's 98% accurate, right? so if it ends up being a girl, she'll just be wearing a lot of blue for the first three months. :)

5. do you have a name picked out for the baby?
we agree on two or three names, one above the others, but we haven't been sharing...you know...just in case we want to change last minute. :)

6. why are you having the baby in langley instead of abbotsford?
i found a doctor in langley because it was closer to work and easier to get to appointments. we're only 25 minutes away from the langley hospital - i'm sure we'll get there in time. :) plus, all i've heard are good things about the langley maternity ward so that's encouraging.

sunglasses r.i.p.

in the early summer of 2005, i begged tim to buy me a pair of sunglasses at MEC one day. he bought them and they have been my summer staple ever since. sure, they've gone missing for months at a time, but they always showed up again. and maybe you've seen pics of me in other sunglasses over the last 4 years, but these ones always were nearby when those other ones broke or got lost. i bought them as big sunglasses were going more mainstream and they seemed quite big at the time but got smaller every year that went by.

today, i opened my purse and found that the arm had broken off - not just missing a screw or something - broken. sigh. goodbye favourite sunglasses. thank you for the goodtimes.edmonton

hawaii

manning park camping

sunshine coast

kayking on maine island

Blog Pirates!

Hey Bec,
You stayed signed on my computer when you left my house.
I couldn't resist a little shout out to your blog readers!

Hey everyone! It's Ang! When you are reading this does it sound like Bec's voice?
Just knowing that this is showing up in Sharelle's blogroll is enough to make me laugh.
Silly blog pirate I am.
Happy Victoria Day!
-Ang

books sitting on my bedside table

waiting for me to get some time off and read them...

this one was from tim for my birthday.

i just finished reading this one this morning. it was just sitting on a display shelf at the library and i picked it up. i love autobiographical books and i guess this author has written some best-selling books but i haven't read them. they'll go next on my list. would i recommend this book? i enjoyed it. very candid look at her personal journey into motherhood as a single mom. she's prone to depression so there are many entries of the journal that are somewhat sad but interesting to read. and as a soon-to-be mom, i appreciated hearing about the bad days as well as the good with her son. she professes christianity and has many intriguing thoughts about God all the way through. it's an easy read in a journal format. but if you're going to pick it up to read, i will warn that there's some profanity. :) you know, fyi.

here are a few of my favourite quotes:

"All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously I'm doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles."

"She says that we're all so nuts amid so much beauty that it's like we're at the circus. In one ring is an amazing array of clowns and bears doing all his great stuff, and in the middle ring is a woman who does breathtaking tricks on horseback, and in the far ring are elephants or seals and maybe more clowns, and above us are trapeze artists, doing these death-defying precision feats, and we're sitting in our seats looking around crabbily, going, 'Where's that darn peanut vendor? I want my friggin peanuts!' - even when we're not particularly hungry."

"Hey, I may not be much, but I'm all I think about."

and...

it just occurred to me late last night that the fact that it's my last day means that i won't be working for a YEAR. i think all along, i've been counting down the last weeks and days to my last day because then i'm off to have a baby. but i hadn't been thinking about after the baby is born. my thoughts of the future stopped at the baby's birth. so this epiphany that that was my last day for a YEAR threw me off a little. that's a long time! and i'm even more excited. :)

and that's it.

the last day.

i'm speechless.

canuck day

last friday, it was suggested at our town meeting that we should have a canuck day. a unanimous YES vote made it so. we planned it for this past tuesday. umm...unfourtunately, the canucks lost on monday night.

but canuck day must go on!

i made cupcakes.

it says on the board, "we still love you Canucks!"

it IS still school day...we need to do some work.

we ate lunch wherever we wanted in the classroom (i like how decked out these boys are in canuck gear.) we were allowed to wear hats all day.

and for the big finale, i tipped over all the desks and made "boards" for our mini-stick game. when i would yell switch, kids would jump over the boards and keep going.

(i left only the last 10 minutes of the day for hockey...for reasons i'm sure you can guess. but tipping over the desks for boards was my idea - the kids were yelling, "what are you doing?" when they got it, it didn't matter that we didn't play for long. they had a great time.)

random days like this will be missed.

just a thought...

if a public washroom could only afford to automate one option between the soap dispenser, faucet, or paper towel dispenser?  it should be the faucet.  because when you have germs on your hands, you turn ON the tap...then you leave your germs on the soap dispenser.  you rinse the germs off your hands then turn OFF the tap...picking up the germs you left there.  if the tap had been automated, everyone's hands would be clean, leaving no germs on the paper towel dispenser.  so those bathrooms with an auto soap and paper towel?  useless.  

how can you tell i've spent a lot of time in public washrooms in my last 2 weeks of my pregnancy?  

sophisticated tastes...

1985

(you may recognize this outfit from my halloween post...)

1988

and in 2009, we've moved onto caramel cheesecake with brownie crust.

a week of lasts

today was my last monday!

       > last morning supervision

       

       > last art class

       

       > last grade level meeting

4 more days left...

tim's kind of weekend...

no - these weren't all the same day.  and it wasn't today or else it would be a lot sunnier in these pics.  but most weekends, tim is looking for things to do outside.  today was no exception.  i used to be annoyed that tim didn't just want to spend time with ME on the weekends.  now, i'm just glad that he has stopped asking me to help.  haha.  today after a little early-mother's day breakfast for tim's mom, we went and voted early.  then we got an ice cream cone.  when we got home, i partook in my favourite weekend pasttimes - reading and napping.  tim seems to think it's funny that i want to read in bed on the weekends but is pleased that i'm not bothering him so he is very encouraging.  "now, you go read your book while i go outside."  haha.  tim weeded, tuned up the lawnmower, and mowed the front and back lawns.  when he was ready for a break, we sat out on the deck together reading and i made him a "frappe" in the magic bullet.  we went for a slow walk around the block and now that he's gone off to putter around the yard some more, i have plans to wander around town.  you know, hit up the grocery store, michaels, maternity clothing store, and maybe get a real frappe at the bucks.  we have learned to peacefully co-exist on saturdays, each doing what we like, then hanging out for short times here and there.   and we have a nice looking yard and house, thanks only to my husband.   as mcdonald's would say, "i'm lovin it." 

my monday musings on tuesday...

i lay awake last night thinking...thanks to a book called, "A Pea in a Pod: Your Complete Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Beyond".

a thought that occurred to me in regards to labour pain is perhaps the intensity of your labour is based on how much pain you've had previously in your life. you know, have you been previously hospitalized before? broken bones? had surgeries? maybe if you've experienced pain, it gives you a gauge for how bad labour is.

the real question here is...what if you've never experienced ANY pain before? i've never been to the hospital. never broken any bones. never even had stitches. i think i'm in for maybe more pain than expected. and i'm expecting a lot. :)

poor tim. he was trying to read his own novel while i read, "A Pea in a Pod" and i kept reading exerpts aloud to him. i figure he should be informed too, right? finally, he put down his book and took my book from me, flipping through it himself. at a diagram of how the baby is most likely positioned inside me right now, he looked over at my stomach and said, "wow. that's pretty crazy, isn't it?" yes, it is.

but even after reading through the horrible labour info, i thought to myself, "oh yeah, i can do that."

the official pet peeve...

you know when you fill out surveys...ahem...mabe this is just me. remember when email surveys used to be so popular? haha. ahh yes. anyways...often there's a question, "what's your biggest pet peeve?" i can never think of one on the spot. i thought of my biggest pet peeve today. i thought i'd share...

when you say that you're either you have a cold or that you're getting a cold and the person you're telling says, "oh! stay away from me!" (or something to that extent) i hate that.

how about you? pet peeves?

summer shoes

equals smelly feet.

does anyone else have this problem or is it just me?

i really, normally, do not have smelly feet but along comes barefoot in summery shoes season and all of a sudden a couple of pairs of my shoes are AWFUL! in fact, the pair i wore today should just be thrown away.

any tips?

runny babbit

have you read that book by shel silverstein called, "runny babbit"? it is a book of poetry all about runny but in almost every line, the first letter of two words are switched. for example, runny babbit is bunny rabbit. we're studying shel silverstein poetry this month and one day all the kids had to interpret one of these poems. today one of my students suggested at lunch that i write a runny babbit poem about my baby. i said, "okay." 15 minutes into computer class, there was a poem on the board for them.

The jaby's name was Back.
He was the butest coy.
He met his mom in May
And he jought her lots of broy.

One day he tew a grooth
And it made him ly a crot.
He put on too many undershirts
And it hade him very mot.

Mrs. Hulba was not shappy.
Her saby was so bad.
Then she realized what the problem was
And now she's gleeling fad.

She picked up jittle Lack
And she gave him a hig bug.
She changed his delly smiaper
And snapped him up all wrug.

Tood gimes.

packing? already?

lately all anyone has told me about is how early their first child came and how unprepared they were. i thought babies were usually late. i'm still betting that the timbit will be late BUT...when our school secretary told me that her baby came 5 and a half weeks early (that would be tomorrow for me), i thought to myself that maybe i should put together some lists of what to pack. i'm not going to pack my stuff but at least if there was a list for me and a list for tim, the panic won't get the best of us.

so i thought of this this morning and then this afternoon when i checked my email, i had an email from babycenter.ca with suggestions for what to pack for hte hospital. wow. they often read my mind. SO...i made a list for me, tim, and snacks to pack (which i'll put on the fridge). i figure i can get the baby's list of stuff ready now since we're not using it yet. :)

hmm...i wonder if preparing this early will mean baby shulba will be extra late...

but just thinking about all this is fairly mind-blowing. this is for real. there's an almost full-sized baby in me right now. i'm going to be coming home from the hospital with a new person. woah.

any suggestions on things you wouldn't want to forget when you went into labour? especially since we're giving birth 30 minutes from home, we will want things after it's all said and done, right?

still wearing the same shirt...?

i'm pregnant in both these pictures. umm...but the one has a bonus fifty pounds. yikes. :) it's the shirt that will always fit you. what a great winner's purchase.

these days...

loving...free mcdonald's coffee until may 2.

feeling...stretched to the limit.

listening...to you are my little bird by elizabeth mitchell.

reading...the last harry potter book.

watching...the first episode of parks and recreation with amy poheler.

hoping...for the sunshine to continue and the temperature to begin warming.

wondering...what we should name the timbit.

reminiscing

go canucks go.

michaels...gets me everytime

i heart crafting.  i love www.etsy.com.  i wish to be bestfriends with soulemama.  when i go to the library, i sit in the magazine section and pour over the scrapbooking magazines.  i went to michaels today and lost track of time walking around very slowly, picking up things i do not need then setting them down when i find the next thing that i do not need.  

yet, despite all this hearting, i cannot become a crafty person.  i tried.  i bought a scrapbook for my first year of teaching but i never finished.  i bought a scrapbook for my second year of teaching.  i also never finished that.  i took a sewing class in hopes of sewing my own flowy shirts or making simple quilts.  i never touched the sewing machine again after the class was done.  i once cut over 100 squares out of magazines, put them together into a collage laid out on a poster board and then left the posterboard sitting perched on the top of the bookshelf in the office for 6 months.  (eventually i did glue them down and the collage is hanging in my kitchen...)  

why?  WHY?  

but i'm trying again.  i was duped into buying another scrapbook.  this one was an "as is" 11x8.5 inch, green, martha stewart album.  i bought a couple pendants and necklaces.  i have plans to return and buy paper that i already drooled over today.  sigh.  i heart crafting.  

some more product placement

here's something fantastic that i tried this week: Mott's Fruistsations Freezies.

100% juice. sometimes things made of juice are high in sugar. these? only 8 grams of sugar.

bought them at pricemart, not in the frozen section, in case you're looking for them.

i've been taking them in my lunch to work (and putting them in the freezer there) and they are a great alternative to chocolate eggs.

but i eat them both. :)

oh science fairs...

at school for the last week and half or so, we've been working on mini-science projects. the idea i had when i started this was that kids would get a little taste of how to set up an experiment with a hypothesis and present their findings.

our "science fair" is on friday afternoon. i invited parents and the rest of the school. so far 10 classes have responded that they are coming. umm...that's over 200 people that will be in our classroom over a 1 and a half hour period. woah. this is no agassiz.

today we worked on our science project posters/research from recess until lunch. phew. i hope we're ready by friday.

ok, the kicking is getting old...

maybe pregnant women are not supposed to say this. but on april 6, i posted about the baby kicking and me pressing back and him pressing out and it was all wonderful and great.

i'm tired of it now. this weekend, i swear, the baby grew. all of a sudden, he's stretching out against my stomach and not pulling his feet back in. i can't lay down without him rolling around for awhile and finding a new position. i'm sure it's crowded in there and hard to get comfortable but wow, the pushing of his whole body out against me? it's too strange. i guess it's not painful per se but the other night i was laying on the couch making little gasps every so often when he'd stick his foot out and then i'd push it back in and finally after what felt like forever, he'd stopped moving. tim asked me if i wanted to lean on him (my head was at the other end of the couch) and i burst into tears saying i didn't want to move because i might wake up the baby and he'd start kicking again. oh man...i may not be cut out for this. imagine if i can't get my baby to stop crying or he won't feed or something - i'm going to be a mess.

also, if you've spent any time with me, you'll know that i'm often saying, "look at my stomach right now - he's moving." and then you look, and nothing is happening. he's moving so much and you can see it from the outside but for some reason, he stops when i tell someone to look. in fact, if you were here right now as i write this, i'd be saying to you, "look! he's moving. can you see it?" i should probably stop telling people to look. i'll be known as the girl who cried wolf...or... baby.

no, i know i should most definitely not be complaining as there are many who have difficulty concieving. a friend of mine recently lost her baby three months in. i am very thankful that i've had such a good pregnancy and am constantly in awe of how God created our bodies to do such crazy crazy things.

and if you're hanging out with me and staring at my stomach, i won't be offended. i'll assume you read this post.

we're ready for sleeping!

baby shulba finally will have a place to lay his head when he shows up. we bought a crib yesterday! we found a liquidation store on craigslist yesterday in chilliwack. you never really know what you're in for when you're heading to a liquidation place but this one was fantastic. we wanted to buy a lot more than just the crib.

so maybe it's a little girly but according to tim, "all cribs are girly". even though it's just tim here in the pics, i'd like to put it out there that i was also instrumental in putting the crib together. haha.

always a place to set things down...

odds and ends...

5 more weeks until i'm done work.

my friend just had a baby this weekend and she had the same doctor that i have. she said he was SOOO great and encouraging. phew. always nice to hear.

it's SO warm out today! how nice. tim is mowing the lawn right now.

my mother in law made me a number of containers of spaghetti sauce awhile back and it's so good. it's what i'm defrosting tonight for dinner. so easy.

i wore a dress to work today for the first time in my life.

the other day the baby was kicking so i pushed back. then he pushed. then i pushed. and it went on for quite a few minutes. it made me a little more excited to have this baby.

my latest favourite show (if you've hung out with me, you've heard me talk too much about it) is DOG the Bounty Hunter. it plays on both A&E and OLN. i never even knew there were bail bonds people out there posting bail for criminals let alone the fact that if they didn't show up for their court dates, they could be chased down and maced. and also, so interesting about the show, is the family relations of the bounty hunters. i love it. if you haven't seen it, you should watch an episode. and then when you hake your head and wonder why rebecca likes this show, watch one more episode and you'll be hooked.

i'm finally nearing the end of the harry potter series. i have not been as keen on the books as most others that i know...i've been reading them quite slowly and leaving months in between books. but i have the last 2 books out of my school's library and plan to have them read in the next 5 weeks. interesting stuff.

eww...the lawnmower is make the air smell like gasoline and the smell is floating in the back door into my kitchen. yuck. we need a new lawnmower. but it's definitely not at the top of the "things to buy soon" list.

in case you're wondering what IS at the top of that list...it's a crib.

this weekend, i went to a kidswap and bought a load of onesies to go under baby shulba's sleepers. apparently that's what you do. i'm new at this. but i bought 9 onesies for $4 (yeah, they're pretty used but i've heard you go through lots of them) and then i found a table where the onesies were like NEW so i bought 5 more for $10. i'm good to go on the onesies i guess. :)

yep, those are the thoughts for the moment. i figured i'd just lump them altoghether since none would make for a full post by themselves. :)