Green Go

Mom arrived this morning, midwife is back from holiday... so Babyz has the "green go" for birth!
We'll be sure to keep you updated. That is why I've been blogging (almost) daily.

Mindless

I can't entirely blame the pregnancy, but I space out now more than I ever did. "Baby brain" they call it. I've been trying to come up with a paper topic that I might present next fall at the AAR in Chicago... something in the field of children and religion. I've been thinking of it for months. I'm still blanking out. The CFP was just extended to the end of the week. So, while yesterday I thought I could give up, today I learn that maybe I should try once more to really develop a topic from my research to date. It's not as if I have nothing to work with! I have piles of information and research I could put together in a great paper if I tried... or, if I was inspired. What I lack most right now is inspiration. I'll dwell on it more... dig out my files again... reaquaint myself... and see what develops. At the very least it will occupy my time and keep me from focusing on the waiting-game that is this last stage of pregnancy.

Two Days

Just two more days (or 2 sleeps as the kids count) until my mom arrives. Yay! I'm excited, but not as excited as mom is. She can't wait to see her "baby" pregnant. When she arrives we can start shopping! And I won't be sitting alone all day... just waiting for Babyz to be born... Okay, so I do more than sit around and wait, but ultimately everything is really a waiting game at this point.
Received a package of clothing and such from mom /my sister today. I had fun going through it all - but now I have to reconsider how my dresser is organized. I really need to get those shelves up...

Home

You can rest easy now knowing Robin is home.
He painted the last coat on the dresser, so I can now put away the baby clothes that are all washed and ready! Just need to get shelves to finish organizing the room.
Otherwise not much to report. You'll have to talk with Robin about his busy business trip to Seattle. Sunny, warm... and a lot of good food (hey, when you have a $200 budget, you may as well blow it all on GOOD food). And here I was at home eating the same 3 dishes Robin prepared for me while he was having fine sushi, surf and turf, and other goodies.
Robin is home. Mom arrives in a few days. ... So Baby can come any time now...

Babyz Moonbeam

My friend Monica came over this afternoon to take pregnancy photographs for me. You can see more in the Flickr account, but here are a few of me and Babyz Moonbeam (this is what my friends are calling her because I am known as Mandyz Moon).

Bear Scare

I almost broke down and cried today at the local yarn shop. When I went to get yarn to finish Bear, there was none of my colour left! I looked through every basket and had given up hope, assuming I would have to frog it and start over with all new yarn... And then, miraculously, there it was in my hand - a hidden skein.
I can happily say that Bear is almost done. She just needs to be stuffed and have some of her seam-holes closed. I'd take a picture, but Robin has the camera in Seattle.
Robin reports that he's already enjoyed sushi and taken in the Space Needle sights.
He'll be home in two nights. So y'all can stop worrying!
Not sure if I'll be willing to give up half the bed though... I've been surrounding myself with pillows so that I can sleep almost on my tummy. It's part of the plan to turn baby to face my back. Right now she is facing forward. I'm also supposed to spend time on my hands and knees to help gravity turn her.
Still feeling great. And no, I haven't yet reached the stage in which I wish she was out already or feeling as if I can't possibly grow any more. I'm happy to have her where she is, and she's happy to be there. She can stay for another couple weeks. But then her lease is up because my patience only extends so far. I think 40 weeks is a nice round number...

Another Snowy Day

Robin did arrive safely in Seattle.
I travelled safely to Value Village today (with friends) to take advantage of their 50% off sale and get more baby clothes.
I am NOT shovelling the driveway. I parked near the end so I wouldn't have to!
Darla is missing Robin.
Monkey is driving me batty - and scratching me up in her playful moods. I'm waiting to catch her asleep so I can cut her nails...
I don't want to do the baby laundry... But I should start one day soon. I'm still hoping a front-loading washer will magically appear in my laundry room... Hey, a girl can dream.
(Robin dreams of a big screen TV. For once *I'm* the practical thinker!)
I am bored.
I wish I could finish Bear but I need more yarn. So I made her a dress with the Mary Jane yarn.while I was watching the CSI marathon on Spike. That was my evening last night. Plus I had a video call with my family in Winnipeg.
Bored again. Finished cleaning house earlier. My laundry basket is empty. (Just baby laundry to do and I already said I don't want to! Plus, Monkey would find a way to sleep on it. I can't put it in the dresser until Robin returns and puts the last coat of paint on.)
Midwife appointment tomorrow. Will pick up yarn on my way home (Just to finish Bear...) and super glue. I need glue to fix my winter boots.

Family Day

Ah, Family Day and I'm all alone...
Of course, stores closed or not, I'm imagining most people are not venturing far today in KW given the icy roads. My friend was planning to come take pregnancy photos of me, but I've insisted she not drive. The roads are ice! And with all the drainage blocked by snowbanks, nothing really drained.

Robin's in Seattle. Or, at least, I'm assuming he is. I'm assuming his flight left on time and he made his connection and he arrived safely... I have to assume because he didn't call to say otherwise... Granted, I have a tendency to never call when I arrive somewhere either.
[Checked the flights from yesterday. They departed TO late, but looks like their connection departed late as well and they made the connection. They would have arrived very late and still had to wake early for training. Poor Robin. He should still be in training now...]

So, what to do today... no walking the dog, that's for sure! And I can't finish Bear because I ran out of yarn half-way through his head. I suspected this would happen (because I revised the pattern) and tried to pick up more yesterday, but the store was closed (although the other stores in the Square were open). Alas, Bear will have to hibernate for a few days. I need a new project! I was thinking of making Bear a dress... Using the leftover yarn from the Mary Jane booties...

Bear and other Knits (plus a crochet)

I said I would upload photos of what I've been working on... meet Bear. Okay, so technically this is Bear's feet and legs.

And Bear's Bottom a few hours later...

But soon he will be a whole Bear. Knit with lovely Koigu wool yarn. The gauge was smaller than the pattern called for with this yarn, so I had to revise the entire pattern... I really wanted to use this yarn!! This is my first time revising a pattern to fit a new gauge... It's also one of my first projects (after the Mary Jane's below) using expensive wool yarn. At $14 a skein... this is going to be a special bear. I only bought 1 skein originally because that was all the original pattern called for, but since revising it I suspect I will go into a second skein.

I also made these fabulous Mary Jane booties (and a hat to match of course) with Koigu wool. They still need a button to close the strap, but I want to wait and see where I should stitch the button after I have a foot to test it on. I have a lot of the skein left and need to figure out what to make with it... maybe a dress for Bear!

In wool soaker world, these are my newest additions: My second attempt at a Curly Purly - this time with Berrocco Peruvian wool that is butter soft (and no wicking soy in the mix!) - and a crocheted soaker with skirt that I was testing a pattern of for the designer. (Made with Canadian Briggs & Little Regal wool in Briar Rose.)

I changed the edge of the skirt from the original pattern because I didn't like the original. It won't fit babe for a while yet.

Robin leaves for Seattle tomorrow afternoon. He's been cooking all day so I have plenty of yummy things to eat during the week: pizza pasta, Italian Wedding soup (with lots of spinach!), and a beef pasta/soup base sauce I can pour over pasta or potatoes. Tonight we're having homemade pizza. Smells almost ready too! Time to log off.

Rings

It has finally come to pass that I can no longer wear my wedding or engagement rings :(
Today I awoke, fortunately not with my rings on as I had taken them off to apply cream to my extremely dry and cracked hands, and they no longer fit. My fingers have swollen. Just a little, but enough.

We went to say Definitely, Maybe this evening, which was a delightful date movie. Robin hopes his daughter will help him find his true love in 10 years or so... ;) Because, obviously marrying your college sweetheart never works out once your child reaches the age of 10. (Or such was Ryan Reynold's situation in the movie.)
Another lesson learned from the film - when teaching 10 year olds sex ed, describing sex as a man pulling his penis out of his pajamas and thrusting it into a woman's vagina... probably isn't the best way to go about it. Ah, but it makes for funny questions.
You know, Robin loves to joke how he and his daughter will take great delight in bugging me... so I'm thinking I should make Robin have "the talk" with his little girl. And tape record it... it's bound to be hilarious!

To bed now. But tomorrow I'm going to upload the photos I took of my recent projects :)

Inventory

After the baby shower I took inventory of what we have and was surprised to see so many gaps. I have a lot of shopping to do!! Hey, I'm not complaining. This will be fun. However, I was very surprised because I *thought* I was well prepared. As I read the list to Robin I laughed... he didn't understand why I thought it so funny. For me to be unprepared... that's freakin hilarious! This morning I stopped in at Angel Worn on my way home from my weekly midwife appointment. These are the updated numbers... [Edit: I went shopping today and am feeling less ridiculous and better prepared.]

Here's what I discovered we have:
16 receiving blankets
17 washcloths
2 hooded towels
25 cloth wiped
5 NB prefolds (cloth diapers) [a dozen more]
9 fuzzi bunz (5 sm, 4 med)
2 snappis
[2 bummis wraps]
a variety of wool soakers
1 change pad
1 NB bib (one whole bib!)
3 premie onesies (hopefully not needed!)
hats of various sizes (no idea what sizes exactly)
[a small, light winter/early spring suit]

NB / 0-3 month clothes:
9 onesies (was 4) [now 11]
6 sleepers (was 3) [now 10]
2 tops [now 3]
3 bottoms [now 4]
3 sweaters
0 dresses [I'm sure mom will fix that when she arrives]
3 mitties (pairs)
2 socks (pairs) [plus a dozen]
3 booties (pairs)

3-6 month clothes:
13 onesies [now 19]
3 sleepers (was 1!!) [now 6]
6 tops [now 10]
6 bottoms
1 sweater
0 dresses
2 socks
0 booties

6-12 month (some say 6-9, some 6-12) clothes:
0 onesies
2 sleepers (6-9)
4 tops
1 bottoms
2 sweaters
1 dress
6 socks
0 booties

12 months +
2 sleepers
4 tops
1 bottoms
1 sweater
3 dresses (18 m)

Can you imagine, 3 sleepers and 4 onesies/undershirts for a NB baby... There's, um, a DAY's worth of clothing! HILARIOUS! Really, all I can do is laugh at myself. And go shopping. Something to keep me busy while Robin is in Seattle...

Celebratory Weekend

What a fabulous weekend I've had!!
It all began Saturday afternoon with a beautiful baby shower for a friend, Shannon, having twins. And by beautiful I am not just refering to the event or the pregnancy or the glowing woman (and husband) opening gifts. The home and decorations and nursery were gorgeous. Admittedly, I was feeling envious. I was happy to be a part of their baby shower and I loved that it was "stag and doe" with men and women in attendance. The men seemed to enjoy themselves equally. Certainly the husband did!

Saturday evening we celebrated Sherri's 30th birthday with a surprise party in her home. It was a lot of fun and I even managed to stay out until 11pm!! (I took a nap between events.)

Pretzels divine that there is a baby inside!

The faery mask Sherri gifted to Babyz

Sunday afternoon was my baby shower / women's celebration. It was beautiful. I was holding back tears a few times. My friends gifted babyz with tokens of their blessings sealed in a (baby) bottle. At the end they chanted around me to lend their community support to the pregnancy. And they all took home candles to be lit when I go into labour. In the middle there was good conversation, tasty food, and of course adorable gifts.

I love these cloth and wooden toys!! I'm imagining the organic cotton bunny doll could be her special friend :) I'd bring that bunny everywhere!!

I really love and appreciate all the gifts. And I especially appreciate that my preferences were respected - there was no plastic/battery toys and many organic items. Mother Earth and I are very grateful. Although I loved everything, I think one gift in particular deserves special mention. It's the one I almost cried over and was the first I opened: a homemade quilt with handdrawn squares put together by Sherri and Kare'. In the center square is a special personalized baby blessing. Saturday afternoon I had been thinking how wonderful it would be to know someone who quilts, because my friend received a lovely handmade quilt. My mom is slowly getting into quilting, but it will be a long time before we see anything... I think this contributed to my delight upon receiving a handmade quilt. There were several more wonderful soft blankets received too and I look forward to wrapping baby in all of them!! I envision many happy hours of cuddling.

A HUGE thank you to all the wonderful women who joined me yesterday in celebrating this pregnancy. So you are aware, there will be a community celebration to greet the baby in mid-April.

Dressing the Room

Excellent. Robin just got home with the new dresser and he agrees that it was a good find. Now I just have to harass him to paint it tomorrow... We've decided to paint it the same green as our bedroom - a good use of leftover paint. The green will look nice and earthy next to the deep purple walls.
Posters are up. We just have to install some shelves and hang some items from the ceiling and then I will feel that the room is done.

This morning I took new pregnancy photos - at Ericka's insistence.


I love my belly. Usually.


Enjoy. Who knows when I'll take photos again!

Winter Drivers

The time I spent today sitting at my desk, looking out my window, was very entertaining... Almost all my neighbours were getting stuck. Even after the city *finally* plowed. For the record, I did go out and offer the help the guy who was spinning his rear tires endlessly (and stupidly), but he insisted he didn't need my help or my offering of grit and other suggestions that would have helped. No, he'd rather spin his tires and look at his car. Seriously, that's about all he did. He'd sit in his car with the door open looking back at his spinning tires. Then he'd get out and examine his tires (no, not the ground! just his tires). Needless to say, the more he spun those tires, the more stuck he was getting (and this was after the plows came and moved the great thickness of snow, leaving a lot of packed snow) because he was making the packed snow slicker and icier.
However, the funniest part, in my opinion, was the fact that he had some sort of SUV-looking GMC vehicle. You know, the kind of vehicle that's played up as all-terrain in commericals. He even has the sporty rack on the back for carrying bikes or something. I'm not sure what it is, it just sticks out from his rear. I'm imagining he bought this vehicle (I should also mention that this seems to be his first winter because he was just plain clueless about how to deal with the situation and from his accent and look he is from somewhere south of the US) assuming it could tackle anything - just like on TV. Now, one would assume this SUV has AWD / 4-wheel drive, but from his rear-spinning tires he was clearly only using rear wheel drive. I'm not sure if this is because his vehicle is rear-wheel only or he doesn't know how to turn on the AWD.
Yes, he spun those tires for a good 15 minutes if not longer. After I went out some other male neighbours went and pushed him out and into the driveway. (After another good 10 minutes of him stupidly spinning his tires.) And then what does he do after they leave?? Backs out and gets stuck again.
"Take the bus!" I thought.
Coincidently, along comes the school bus... and since SUV is blocking the road, school bus has to try and back up and turn around. Needless to say, school bus gets stuck, but manages to free itself.
All day I've listened to the sound of cars outside trying to get off our street... from this morning when they were stuck in the plush snow through this afternoon as they slid along packed, slippery snow.
Fortunately the neighbours were all helping one another. Although I could offer some help, I was not about to go pushing cars out of the snow. You would all have my head, I know! You'll be pleased to know the only shovelling I did was to move what the snowplow raked across the end of our driveway. Robin did the rest this morning.

I spent most of my day being intimate with the sewing machine (and pins and the iron and scissors). Again. We have a love-hate relationship. I hate sewing. (I'm also not very fond of my old machine, but at least I have a sewing machine.) I love finishing projects. For example, I love that I finished four throw pillows that I've been meaning to do for... a couple years. They are for baby's room and all baby-room stuff is getting top priority right now. What I really *should* be finishing are the kitchen curtains, but the thought of cutting the panels is very depressing. And then sewing those looooooong edges... I did wind a bobbin with the thread I need... that's progress. Now I wait for Robin to get home for dinner...

EDIT: The dinner planned wasn't thawed yet, so after much humming and hawing I won and got delicious pancakes from Mel's Diner. Sooooo yummy. With apples and cinnamon and sausages too. I could eat "breakfast" foods all day!!

Busy Baby Bee

I'm keeping busy around here with all sorts of projects, plus research. Good news - today I found a dresser for the baby's room :) Now we just need to pick it up from Value Village and re-paint it... And by "we" I mean Robin.
I bought lanolin yesterday, so I'm ready to start washing and lanolizing the soakers in preparation for use. I also now have the sewing notions I needed to finish the mattress and sheets. I'm hoping to get that all done for this weekend so I can show off the baby room on Sunday at the shower. Yes, the baby shower is quickly approaching. The day before my shower I have a friend's shower to attend (which I also just finished shopping for). It will be an active weekend!

I have been crashing early the last couple of days - in bed by 8pm. Hopefully it's a short-lived phenomenon. Robin woke me at 10pm last night to tell me there was a new episode of Supernatural (my favourite show) on! It was about witches. Evil witches of course, just like the pagan deities featured in the last (Yule) episode were evil. I could be offended, except that the entire storyline of the series is about demons and hell and evil - so *obviously* they'd frame pagan things as evil... I do suspect there are some fundamentalist Christians writing the story... But it's a good show. And the guys alone make it worthwhile to watch... mmmm
Anyhow, after Supernatural I was back in bed.

I woke early this morning (a side effect of going to bed early) and forced Robin out of bed earlier than he would have liked because *someone* had to shovel the car out and *this* time it wasn't going to be me!!!
I made him coffee... what a good wifey I am.
However, I've advised him that next time it might be easier for him to bus to work. The roads were not nice, traffic was crawling (as it should - although I saw one truck had been pulled over by cops presumably for speeding - idiot), and Robin got to work just on time.

Speaking of Robin and work - he's flying to Seattle the week of the 18th for work-training. Lucky him. He is very excited and I'm happy for him. If you're in the area, feel free to drop by that week :) I'll be home.

Snow Day

I suspect "snow day" blog posts are popping up all over Ontario (and who knows where else) today. All the students, from K - University are home today. Me, I'm looking out the window thinking "I do NOT want to shovel that!!" But alas, someone has to if I'm to move the car. Robin is at work, so the task once again falls to me.
The theme of the Imbolc celebration I have helped plan this year is Transition. Rightfully so this year! Yesterday was sunny and warm, today is a snow day, and this weekend is supposed to be above zero... One day you can see the grass, the next it's blanketed in white.

What's a girl to do on a snow day, besides make hummus (without enough lemons...) and knit. I keep saying I'll use the pumpkins in my front entrance, which look like they're still good, but I dread the thought of cutting them open, cleaning them out, baking them - and THEN making something from the meat. It's a loooong process. And constantly-hungry pregnant me doesn't make for a good cook.

One thing I could do this afternoon is make a short promotional video clip on behalf of Spirits of the Earth festival. They'd like some clips made with a "nature" background by attendees - praising the festival of course... Is a snowstorm natural enough? ;)

The other thing I'd like to finish is a friend's birthday gift. I shan't say more about that until it's done and gifted... Then I'll post pictures, because I'm quite pleased with how it is turning out, especially since I'm making it up as I go...

In order to do any of these things, I would have to stop sitting here... which would require moving... and then I might feel obliged to shovel. Better to sit here and type. I'm also browsing story books for an Imbolc story of tranistion... still no luck and I've almost exhausted my collections. Then I find another book I forgot about... There's a good series by Stephen Cosgrove I can think of that might have an appropriate story, but I'm pretty sure they are still in Winnipeg because I can't find them here. I'll have to add them to my must-retrieve list.

As a final note, yesterday the midwives came here for our homevisit. Nothing particular to report. Listened to Baby's heartbeat as usual, mostly for Robin's benefit since he hasn't been able to attend every appointment, and we noticed how much slower it is than when we first heard it. Of course, it's still more rapid than my own.