Spongebob's pants are on fire
Note to self: when disinfecting sponges in the microwave, do not accidently hit ten minutes instead of ten seconds and then walk to the other end of the house. Burning sponge in the microwave is about the nastiest smell ever - but at least we know that the smoke detectors work.

Wow, it's the end of October already! I keep looking at the blog and wanting to post, but somebody's been taking up a lot more of my time than I previously anticipated. It's funny, you have an idea of what it's going to be like to have a baby and stay home with him, but you never really know what you're getting yourself into. For the most part, I've really been digging the mom thing, Ben's an amazing baby. He's sleeping about 6 hours a night now, which is pretty good. People tell you that you learn to live with less sleep, and they're right! Steve can fall asleep in seconds now to take advantage of any quiet moment. I tend to be more alert to Ben's fussing, so it takes me a while to get back to sleep after night time feedings and cuddling. Did I mention that Ben's a cuddler? He's about the cutest thing ever when he falls asleep in your arms.
I'm also getting pretty good transporting baby in the car seat and stroller to run errands. When I started, I had no clue. I'm sure that more than one mom has rolled her eyes at me and muttered "rookie" under her breath as I've tried to attach the infant seat to a grocery cart or tried to get him into his stroller in the parking lot of the mall. A few tips:

• At the grocery store, park near where you return the carts, that way you can get a cart and attach the infant seat and then roll across the parking lot to the store (this becomes important when your baby starts packing on the pounds), and you can put the baby in the car and return the cart without taking your eyes of him. I was sprinting across the parking lot a few times before I figured this out.
  
• Keep your stoller in the trunk of the car, you never know when you'll need it, and if you live upstairs, like me, you don't have to drag it up and down.
  
• Get yourself a nice, light, small-ish stroller. You can't get those SUV strollers up and down stairs easily if there are no ramps, and let's not talk about narrow aisles! I have a small stroller, and I can barely manage some store aisles.

Stepping Into the Void...

Thought I'd put something up here. I'd almost forgotten that this is a group blog, actually.

Well, Dina is fully into the baby-bliss, and it makes me all weepy (happy-weepy)just to think about it. People keep asking me whether I want another child and all I can say is "Yes! But when?" With the husband back in University it doesn't seem like the time will be right 'til at least next summer. And we don't even need contraceptives, cuz we never see each other...

Actually we do manage to spend time together. We just went up to my sister's in the Laurentians this past weekend. What a treat that was. My sister and her husband are the caretakers of the Molson family's estate up there. They live in a beautiful house with a guest apartment attached (just right for li'l ol' us), and the estate is 1500 acres on pristine lakes (3) and forest. It's like going to a resort, particularly because my sister loves to make beautiful meals that we linger over for hours in between swimming, boating, fishing and walking adventures. And her two boys take care of my kids all day. The good life.

This has been the best summer in recent memory for me. It was full of fun and yet it was very peaceful and relaxed at the same time. I feel refreshed and invigorated after it. I didn't get married and go to Paris (like Elizabeth), but I think I will remember this summer. My kids are at a good age to enjoy it, I guess (6 and 4), so we enjoy it as well.

I don't have anything particularly scintillating to say, here, in case you haven't already made that assessment. But I will mention one more thing: My cat has cancer. She has a tumour in her face that has eaten away some of her bone and is starting to eat away her sinuses. She is behaving pretty normally, so it is very difficult to make the decision to euthanize her. We only found out it was cancer on thursday, and we're watching her closely to see if it is interfering with her breathing. I figure when she can't breathe comfortably is when we'll do it. But so far her behaviour is normal. I'm so sad, because we got her 2 years ago, when she was already 10 years old, and I don't think she'd had a very happy life until she came to us. I am glad, however, that she has been happy with us. She cuddles with my daughter in bed, and she appears to be in the throes of ecstasy every time. My daughter squishes her like a teddy bear, and she couldn't be happier. I will be very sad to see her go, but I don't want her to suffer. I've explained things to the kids, but it's hard. What a weird thing to have to make the decision when another living creature will die. It seems wrong, but I guess humans have had to take that responsibility since we started domesticating animals. It's a responsibility I'd rather not have, but I accept it as the inevitable end of our animal/human relationship.

So, anyone else up for blogging? Tell us how your summer was. Let's not let Dina down!

I'm back!
Well, I'm kinda back. Ben is a wonderful baby, but he has this problem with sleeping alone, so all too often I am under a baby which makes typing a bit impossible. I will try to post whenever I have two free hands! Thanks to everyone for their well wishes, I will get those thank you cards out soon. Someone just started squawking- gotta go!

As promised, shower pics and the baby's room here. A million thanks again to Maggie for throwing a great shower!!!

Showered and ready to go
Saturday was the baby shower and it was a blast! Friday night, we went out and my mother-in-law got a mess of fruit. On Saturday morning, we chopped and washed and peeled and then threw it all in a box and headed over to Maggie's place. We decorated a bit and set up the food table and then people started to arrive. People carrying gifts and food! I decided that Saturday was going to be a black-out day for the gestational diabetes thing-I didn't check my sugar, and I didn't care. We all hit the food table and there was much chatting and laughing, nobody told me any birth horror stories which was appreciated. The gifts were piled high atop the table-people were very generous and there was much oooing and awwing at all the little clothes and stuffed creatures. Thank you everyone! I have pictures and they will be posted soon! We managed to get the loot home and Steve and I got to assemble and play with it. Steve and dad got the carpeting installed, after encountering many problems. By Sunday night, we had the crib up with the bedding and suddenly it's starting to look like a room!
On Monday morning, Steve's mom left and we went off to the hospital for the attempted baby turning. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. The doctor strongly advised against it because the chances of the baby turning were about the same as it turning on its own and the risk of having an emergency cesarean were looming. The baby appears to be moving well and seems very healthy despite the fact that it's small, that's good news. There's always the chance that it will flip over before the 28th, so I'm trying to stay positive. It's getting harder and harder to work, my brain's having a difficult time focusing on anything. Today, I'm pretty happy to be in an air conditioned office though, because it's going up to 31C + high humidity.

What else?
We finished painting the squares in the baby's room on Monday, it looks really neat! We also finally got around to taking the stroller out of the box. It took us 30 minutes to figure out how to unfold it! It looked easy enough when the guy was doing it in the store. I think that I even did it myself at the store. Good thing that we decided to try it out before actually needing to put a baby in it and go somewhere, two idiots and a baby out on the sidewalk manhandling a folded stroller. The instructions were really more diagrams without much detail which didn't help. The baby shower is this weekend and my mother-in-law is arriving today, with more presents. The doctor is going to try to turn the baby around on the 14. I've been told that this hurts quite a bit by the doctor, and generally when doctors tell you that something hurts, they're not making it up. Until Monday, I'm still going to try all of the stuff I've heard about to get it to turn by itself. Perhaps when we get to the hospital, the doctor will have a look and discover that we're heads down and feeling fine!

thhhhhppppttttlllll
Last Thursday we received a call from the hospital confirming my scheduled c-section on July 28. This scared the hell out of us because we didn't schedule anything with the hospital. Turns out that my doctor decided to book it because he's 99.9% sure that I'm having a c-section. You have to love a doctor who gives you so little hope of avoiding having your midsection sliced open. He logically explained why he thought this, but that's not what I wanted to hear. I wanted some compassion from him, perhaps any sign that he actually realised how big a disappointment this was to me and how scared I am of the surgery. I didn't get it, which of course just made me mad, and stubborn. I talked him into trying to turn the baby, which will be attempted either the 14 or the 24. I got some advice from an experienced midwife, she made me feel hopeful. I talked to a female doctor and a nurse at the hospital who sympathised and told me there's still a good chance that the baby will turn of its own. The nurse did tell me that my doctor is one of the best at the hospital, even if he's not the most compassionate. This made me feel better, because I was starting to worry that I had chosen a c-section crazy man.
Needless to say that I'm still very down in the dumps about the whole thing, I'm trying to stay positive and relaxed, but it's difficult.

Busy weekend!
So, as of Thursday I have to check my blood at least three times per day and watch what I eat and worry about the fact that baby continues to enjoy hanging around the uterus with its head up, instead of down which should be its preferred orientation. We also discovered that it's something called a "frank breech", which means that its feet are up by the head. Essentially, we have a Cirque de Soleil baby. We had our birthing courses this weekend. The Saturday session was very good, the teacher was animated and organized and taught us many breathing and relaxation exercises. The teacher on Sunday was not very good and was more of a natural childbirth/breastfeeding nazi. She did take us on a tour of the birthing centre and recovery floor though, so it wasn't a complete waste. The funniest bits were the videos we had to watch, most of which were filmed in the late 70s. The hair was great! Of course, none of the mothers screamed, or cursed at their husbands, or took the drugs, so you had to assume they were insane. We also enjoyed bbq with Terence and Irene Saturday night, and Ramsay and Mirella Sunday, so today I'm a bit loopy. I'm looking forward to the holiday tomorrow to rest up.
I got the new Harry Potter last week and have been reading it in short intervals, don't want it to end too fast. It's quite different from the first four, there's a complete change in tone which I was disappointed with, but it really was inevitable considering that the character is growing up and the plot is getting progressively darker.

I was going to talk about the weekend, but it was pretty uneventful. We put Scott on the train Saturday morning which was sad, and Kathy came over Sunday, which was a perfect way to spend an afternoon. After weeks of eating everything that moves (doctor's orders), I am now 6 pounds heavier than before I got pregnant, which should make my doctor very happy. Of course, now I fear that when I go in at the end of March he's going to say, "hey, whoa there tubby", but the butter really was worth it :-)
I think that I can kinda feel something moving around down there, and I definitely have started to look pregnant, at least to me. One day last week I looked down and there it was, not just my regular belly, but a rounder, harder belly. Freaky! My next ultrasound is March 17 (should I paint a shamrock on my tummy?). They should be able to tell us the sex of the baby, but we don't want to know. My friend Kuan wants to know what she's having, but her baby is apparently being very shy about the whole thing. I want a surprise at the end, we know so much more than our mothers did when they were having kids; I know how healthy the baby is, I can hear the heartbeat and see what it looks like, why wreck the ultimate surprise? Besides, this way if I'm having a girl I don't get pink stuff, not really crazy about pink.

Woo hoo! Sofa!
The sofa and chair arrive sometime this afternoon! Yay! I'm in training today, so Steve will be heading home to wait for sofa men. In other news, it looks like I'm heading back to NY next week for business... oh joy, that's about a week of x-mas shopping time wasted.

The Latest James Bond Movie

Yes, I confess, I saw "Another Day to Die" and frankly it's too violent, long and seemingly pointless car chases that somehow make for a very flat and tired forumla. However Brosnan makes a good Bond and the Bond girl in the movie, Halle isn't bad either. The song, by Madonna is okay too and if you catch the music video by the same name as the movie, it's also good (and in my opinion better than the movie, it's not as long). As you would expect, Madonna does make a cameo appearance in the movie and if you have seen the video, you'll recognize the setting.

As you probably heard the movie does a shameless job of product promotion. I felt that this was one of it's strengths, it gave me something else to think about while someone else was being brutally beaten and killed.

The special effects ranged from okay to absolutely terrible. The worst scene is one that allegedly takes place in Iceland where Bond is driving across some ice that is being cracked by a device from outer space and as you would expect he drives over any icy precipice and drops a 100 feet or so straight into the ocean. What makes the whole thing totally unbelievable is a) the way the setting looked, totally fake, something out of a 1950s el cheapo Sci-fi movie, b) you can't suspend you disbelief when he somehow manages to yank a piece of the car off and turn it into a surfboard and ride the surf to safety. (I think he managed to grab the car's parachute too before the car fell straight into the ocean.)

I am glad I saw this at Guzzo cinema as a Sunday matinee as opposed to lining up for it on a Friday or Saturday night and paying full fare for it. Don't bother with the video when it comes out unless you really want to see the scene where Halle comes out of the water in her spectacular orange bikini and her equally spectacular body...


I rarely go to movies, especially ones my husband wants to see and this is one he had been champing at the bit to see. (I didn't know he liked orange bikinis). I think the next time he goes to a movie, I will stay home and rent The Shipping News or The End of the Affair. I am bound to see some plot, drama, and some good acting.

Quiet Monday
Many people have taken today off because tomorrow's a holiday here, so it's vewy quiet. I like days like these because there's no traffic and almost no one bugs me so I can get some work done. This weekend we didn't get as much done as we'd hoped. The heat wave has started, so we were a bit dazed by the return of summer heat. We did get out to a friend's housewarming which was lots of fun. Everybody feels obliged to talk about baby stuff when I'm around. I guess it's an obvious conversation choice, and I do love to hear everyone's cute baby stories and how happy they are about being moms and dads, but I'd like some variety. Tell me something horribly embarassing about your first parenting experience that makes me feel completely normal about feeling so totally unprepared for this. I'm serious, I'm freakin' out here people!

Dang!
Fixed my blogback and lost some of my comments. Sorry!

This sucks
Doctor made a mistake, I have gestational diabetes after all, which means that now I have to go the the hospital from 7:30-3:30 next week. The hospital doesn't seem to care that I have to make that time up somewhere.... I'll probably end up waiting for hours in uncomfortable chairs. Oh! and just to make my day a bit brighter, my doctor has completely freaked me out by telling me that the baby hasn't turned yet, so I should be mentally preparing myself for the possibility of a cesarean. I've been frantically searching the internet for exercises that I can do at home. So far I have found lots of advice involving tilting yourself up on an ironing board and using frozen peas, music, and flashlights to coax the head down. I'm thinking a full sound and lights show between my legs ought to do the trick. I'm very unhappy at the moment.

Drat!
Yesterday I checked the weather and it said that it was going to be sunny and low 20s all weekend. Today, it's rainy and high teens. The gods are thwarting by birthday BBQ...... everyone bring a sweater and an umbrella.
I had a lovely birthday, went out to lunch and Steve took me out for a great mexican dinner. He gave me a Shaun figurine from A Close Shave, so cute!

Happy Birthday to Me!

You've got the cutest little ...

Can't see it? Try this and squint a bit:

The camera loves ya baby!
Had another ultrasound today, and blood tests, and an appointment with a dietician. It was a very busy morning of running up and down stairs. The baby looks pretty good to me. It decided to position itself so that we got a very good look at its face, posing for the camera already! I'll have a photo up tomorrow, with the appropriate arrows, etc. It was moving its mouth too, which means a good appetite, or it's already working on a welcome speech. The doctor said that the waist looks a bit small, so I have to go back in at the end of the month. The dietician told me a whole bunch of stuff that I already knew. I suppose many people do not know how to eat well, but I am not one of these people. Of course, seeing as how my birthday is this week, I doubt that I will be choosing not to eat cake and ice cream either. I think that the hospital policy errs on the side of the overly cautious.
Saturday was spent at a sad family function. My aunt died last Monday, and we had a small memorial service in the townships. My grandmother is holding up well, despite her own illness. It was very draining to say the least. Sunday we were going to go out and shop for a dresser and look at more strollers, but instead we worked around the house and did some groceries. Yesterday gave us a little reminder of the warm weather to come, it was hot and humid. Steve set up the air conditioner in the bedroom, perfect timing! We were watching the season finale of Six Feet Under last night, my wonderful brother-in-law tapes it for me, when the tape suddenly went fuzzy grey screen in the last minutes! Luckily, we have an alternate supplier so we can find out what happened.

Baby report
It's been a while. Let's see, as you know my belly exploded a few weeks ago, which was hard to get used to, but I seem to have finally adapted. I have discovered that bean burritos are not the best thing to eat right now. Spicy food is so far still a-ok. The ever-generous mother-in-law insists on getting us the stroller, and with the help of her sister, is sending us about a million receiving blankets, so I'll have plenty left over to wax the car. I'm still stripping the closet door of the nursery and we haven't started painting the squares on the walls yet, but maybe we'll get a few taped off this weekend. The baby is moving around, although now it seems more like gentle rolling than kicking. According to the books, the baby is now about 18 inches long and 3 and a half pounds, which really doesn't explain why I have now gained over 25 pounds, but my doctor says that I'm normal.
In other news
I have had better weeks. Had some very bad news on Monday (not baby-related), so I'm rather blue.