swapping

one of my favourite things about facebook right now is the Abby Kids Swap Site. I spend lots of time there looking at all the clothes posted. the great part is that they're all in abbotsford so even if it's just a $2 onesie that looks cute, it's not a big deal to swing by and get it. lately, i've bought a number of things (mostly pink...) and everyone seems to do the same thing. you tell them the day you'll be coming by and they leave it outside on their front step in a bag for you. then when you show up, you put the money in mailbox or under the mat. it's quite the easy process and not having to deal with people face to face is something i love! haha.

now that we found out we're having a girl, i have started going through boxes of ben's clothes. i have two years worth of clothing to organize. what i'm finding is that i pull things out of these boxes and think, "i don't want to get rid of THIS!" even though there's no real reason to keep them. so far, i've been organizing the clothes into 4 piles: stuff that a girl could wear (keep), stuff that's in good enough shape to sell, stuff that's decent to give to goodwill, and stuff to toss (stained usually). of course there are the handful of items that are going in a tiny box to save indefinitely - ben's toque that he wore home from the hospital, his first little pair of shoes, etc. i'm trying not to let that box get very full. :)

happy

my happy birthday frap

(my cake pics are on my mom's computer)

happy birthday tim - ben was a big help on the candles. :)

big boy bed

in anticipation for the baby's arrival, we're planning on revamping our spare room into ben's new "big boy" room. currently it's a turquoisey blue which i thought would be okay but turns out, i want it to be a little more matchy with ben's bedding. but one cannot match paint colour to bedding if there is no bedding so i started the search online last week. here's what i chose - it's on it's way to sumas, washington right now! can't wait to pick it up, pick a paint colour and get decorating.

may's been lacking

for some reason, it's been a tough blogging month. i went back to last may and read some much better posts and thought, "man, i'm really slacking here!" i thought i would just let you know that i know. i'll get working on it. ;)

cinnamon loaf recipe

it seems that perhaps having a toddler may improve my baking. with the rainy weather lately and a couple days that tim took the truck to work, i had to come up with something to do to keep ben occupied in the house. last week, i baked banana bread and today (yep, tim's working on a saturday!), we tried out a cinnamon loaf.

in an attempt to not eat all the banana bread on my own, i cut it up into slices and wrapped each slice individually and put them in the freezer. then tim could grab a frozen slice for his lunch and it would be thawed by lunch. i was also hoping that the frozen state of the bread would deter me from eating it. but what are microwaves for? though, i did pretty well and only pulled out a piece to nuke it once.

as for the cinnamon loaf this morning, i'm pretty sure that will be fully eaten in the next few days - it's so good. i'd been feeling like coffee cake so i called my mom for a recipe but her coffee cake recipes called for ingredients that i didn't have on hand. then she suggested this one and after it's been made, it was exactly the flavour that i'd been craving in the first place! i've eaten two warm slices already...this is why i shouldn't be baking... but here's the recipe if you're looking for something:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup shortening (i used butter)

2 eggs

1 cup sour milk or buttermilk - my mom suggested i use almost a cup of milk and mix a couple tablespoons of vinegar in and let it sit a bit before using it - it did the trick.

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

save for the end: 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon

Cream the sugar, butter, and then add eggs. Add half the flour, the other dry ingred. and half the milk and stir. Then add the remainders of the flour and milk and stir. (apparently this makes it fluffier) Pour batter into a greased loaf pan and pour the sugar/cinnamon mixture on top. "swirl" with a knife (i didn't quite do this right as there are huge patches of no cinnamon in my loaf but it still tastes good). Bake at 350 for about an hour.

There wasn't enough ingredients for Ben's liking and he continued to pretend pour things into the batter after everything was in. But it was just right for me. Enjoy!

i posted yesterday and that post seems to have disappeared! so if you're just tuning in now...

boy or girl?

at my last doctor's appointment, we'd figured out that i'd be having my ultrasound in week 20 and the results would come to my doctor's office at 21 weeks - right in time for my regular monthly appointment. perfect, i'd get to show up and find out from my doctor in person whether we are having a boy or girl. tim and i planned to have him come along to the appointment so we could find out at the same time.

today, the phone rang and call display showed my doctor was calling. hmm... i answer and it's him. "hi, rebecca. i have some results for you here." whaaaat? oh no, oh no, we had a plan! i replied, "already? but i'm coming in tomorrow." "do you want to wait? i haven't looked at it yet - i can stick it back in your file and we'll open it tomorrow if you want." ummmm.....

i WAITED! i could have found out today and i WAITED! crazy.

we find out tomorrow....

happy mother's day!

when i get grown

When I first heard this song by Treelines, I was driving by myself in the car. I liked the sound so I turned it up a little to hear the words. aaand I started to cry. Sure, you can blame the pregnancy hormones but when I hear it (like I'm playing it on repeat right now as I write), I can't think too hard about the words or I tear up again. If you haven't already pressed play on the youtube video, go back and listen and then continue here.

The main lines that get me everytime are:

Their cribs will fill our morning but by noon they'll be in school,
Their teenage years will come and go and by the rising of the moon they'll settle down,
With someone else who shares their name now.

It's the way they compare their children's growing up as a day - cribs fill our morning, noon, they're in school, by the rising of the moon, they'll settle down. What's scary is that as soon as you have a child, you realize how so very fast they grow. It was like, "Oh my goodness - I'm not ready for my baby to grow up so fast." *cry*. ;)

But as I've over analysed this song, it occurred to me that there may be another reason that this song can tug at the heartstrings (well, MY heartstrings). it's about finding ONE person and creating a life with that person and growing old with them. There aren't too many songs, shows, people etc. out there endorsing this ideal - in fact, it sometimes feels the opposite. So another feeling while I listen is that reminder that I'm so glad that I've found my person that I want to live out this life with.

Download the song for free here.

When I get all grown I want to find a little space,
Somewhere that I can be myself somewhere I feel safe and settle down
With a girl who shares my name.

We'll store up in the autumn months and party in the spring,
We'll lay away those summer days on white sand by the sea,
We'll fall asleep when the snow begins to come down.

Then the day will come when her stomach starts to grow,
We'll freak about the million things we don't already know,
We'll give them names after my favourite hockey players if it's ok.

Their cribs will fill our morning but by noon they'll be in school,
Their teenage years will come and go and by the rising of the moon they'll settle down,
With someone else who shares their name now.

And when our shoulders like old wooden fences lean towards the ground,
The grandkids grow like rocket ships shooting to the clouds,
Her hair is grey but her blue eyes never shone so proud.

When the Lord comes calling and we have to say goodbye,
I'll rest her in the ground if I'm the one whose left behind,
Whisper goodnight and wait patiently for my white light to come.

"whaaat?" - ben

after we had our ultrasound, we sat ben down at the computer (the pics were on a cd) and showed him the pictures of the baby. we attempted to explain that "mommy's tummy is getting bigger because she's growing a baby inside" which really is the freakiest sounding thing to say to a toddler. he seemed to like the pictures but when we kept trying to explain anything else, he just stared at us blankly. (i can just see my dad shaking his head in disbelief - haha). we figured he didn't have a clue what we were talking about.

then on tuesday, we were hanging out with ang and her son, kainoa, and i was telling ang this story. then i said to ben, "hey ben, where's mommy's baby?" and he pointed at my stomach! so who knows what's going in and what he's thinking? hopefully by september, we'll have him all prepped and ready for a sibling!

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)