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I don't know how apparent it is in this picture, but I was freaking out. Not so much at this moment, because Amelia was in mama-bear's reach, but when she started moving around. This is from last weekend. We went to visit a good friend and experience island life for a few days. He took us to see the lake that's close to his property, and the dock, well, it floats but wobbles. It kind of made me dizzy to stand on it and look around, so I sat down right away. And then I started getting nervous for Amelia. I know she was never in any more danger than getting a little wet, both our friend and Lance (and me) would've been able to grab herhad the need arose, but even more, there was always someone within inches watching her every move. So I don't know why I was so nervous other than maybe low blood sugar and mama instincts run rampant.We had a really lovely time on the island, went for nice walks, played on the beach, ate good food and had a good visit. both Lance and I took a day or so to re-adjust to city life.
Time for work
Usually when Amelia wakes up from her nap, she comes and finds me for a little cuddle. She also usually cries a bit as she makes her way. Not today, I heard the littlest noise, probably the mouse clicking, and came into see this.
quilt
This is the double-sided quilt I had intended to finish before Amelia was born, need I say more? Of course, it's still not done, but there's lots of time before Christmas right? The darker side is brushed cotton aqnd the lighter side is regular quilting cotton. When I bought the fabrics, I tried to be as gender-neutral as possible, but the light side looks very pink to me. ( an aside, as I type, Amelia is sitting on my hip resting her head on my shoulder.She just woke up.) The bottom left picture shows the light red for the borders, to tie the two sides together. And one more yogurt picture to fill in the collage. The finished quilt will be almost five feet square. (It'll be five feet long and just under five wide)(and there are 72 squares, 6 inches , 8rows x9 columns. no prime numbers Amanda! If I ever get better at quilting I'd love to incorporate mathematical patterns into quilts. Someday...
got yogurt?
Amelia's getting the cold that I've got, I think. Otherwise why was she awake from 1-5 am this morning, and nothing was really working for her? Watching tv worked for a while, and letting her have free reign of the house while I rapidly depleted our supply of tissues. This picture is from yesterday evening while I was trying to put a dinner together. It worked, she was happy for a while.
one year ago
Look at those cheeks! And, compared to this, she has lots of hair now...Amelia has had a rough few days, starting saturday night when she fell flat on her face and scraped it up and got a bloody nose! Then on monday, she had a short nap so tiredness contributed to four more falls. Knees, elbows, hands, face and even her ear have all been scratched and bruised. she went to bed early that night, with no bath. (Just get me to bed mom!!) then yesterday morningshe fell again, the only injury was her hand, but that had a chunk of skin missing, so Lance and I, (yes, it took both of us) put a bandaid on it. Good thing too, it is covered in dirt from her gardening adventures. I dodn't know if she had a growth spurt and that affected her balance, or if she's a bit overconfident (all the places she fell she's had no problem with for months). Hopefully there'll be a break now.edit: I mean a break in the injuries, not a break break!!
ee-ee-eek
This is what greeted Lance this morning as he went to take his morning shower. Because she was on the curtain, she could, and did, move around. And in those few minutes while Lance and I poked our noses in and out of the bathroom door, she disappeared! Spider on the loose. we spent some time trying to see where she had gone, without actually going into the bathroom ourselves, then I gave up and went back to making breakfast. Lance was prepared at this point to forgo his morning shower (he'd had one last night). I was calmly cooking breakfast, Amelia playing in the kitchen with me, and assuming Lance was getting dressed, when I turn around and there he is with a huge spider in a glass by my face. I ran shreiking outside, (forgetting my determination not to pass on my weaknesses to Amelia) (although she didn't respond to my yells, maybe she thought we were playing?). I calmed down enough to take the the spider from him to deposit outside. Amelia was very interested in the "buzz-buzz" (her word for all insects, spiders, and bug-looking fluff).Lance went off to finally take his shower, Amelia and I started breakfast. Next thing, there's Lance in his towel; there was another huge spider in the shower! Lance still had soap in his hair, he had just jumped out when he spotted it. How it avoided the first routing of the bathroom is a mystery.So here we were, already in a weakened state, Lance with soap dripping into his eyes, with an even hairier spider to deal with. It was clinging on to the bottom of the shower curtain as Lance moved the curtain, or so I thought, so I shrieked prompting Lance to yell and we both ran away. This time I went in, gingerly moving the curtain and saw that it was not on the outer curtain as I had thought, but on the inner one, but it could still escape from that position! After a couple of tries, I managed to shake it loose into the tub and whip the curtain away from its' long hairy reach. So now it was just a matter of trapping him in a glass, but I couldn't do it. I tried, and even got a wider mouth jar, but could not get my arm close enough. Lance had recovered enough now to come back and trap it in the jar, and then I took him outside, showing a very interested Amelia again on my way.Ah the joys of living in a basement suite, especially when there's a change in the weather (it's nice and cool today). Poor Lance though, that is really too much for one morning.
wanna kiss??
Amelia's getting her eye-teeth in, you know, the vampire ones...(This is actually her slurping down frozen blackberries, but she really is getting those teeth. Left side first as usual)
These were as we were headed to some friends for a BBQ. She was being so funny, I just kept snapping. The bottom right is her kissing her owie on her knee.
she's too cute
(I titled a previous post Molli-Mommee without saying why. It's because Amelia has difficulty distinguising the two words, so most often Mommee means Molli.)
boobais!!
We went out to a bog in richmond and picked blueberries this morning! Amelia was taking them out of my bucket almost as fast as I was putting them in, but she only ever takes one at a time. In this picture, Amelia is demonstrating her skill at juggling; she holds two beanbags, (she can do it with berries too) over her head and wiggles her wrists.
helping Auntie Molli
Part of the reason I haven't been posting as much is that Molli's in town for the summer, and we've been a bit busier. This Is Amelia helping Molli with one of the two baby quilt she made in four days. *sigh*. Now she's bullied and cajoled me into starting the one that I bot for Amelia before she was born. That will be done soon. (not in four days though, there are lots of little squares to applique).
sam!!!
This is from last week. What qualifies for a good day is when, even if it's a bit cool, it's not raining and we can be outside on the patio, playing with a rock, or some dirt, or a little puddle of water, or just sitting beside Mom watching for crows and hearing your occasional yells of "DA, DA!!" echo off the houses, and then Sam comes! That's the best. Then you follow him while he tries to follow you, and his fluffy, flufffy tail tickles your face, and then he sniffs the grass so you sniff the grass. Ahh, a good day.
clockwise from top left: east over the Coast Mountains; southeast, some of Vancouver; south overlooking Vancouver; westsouthwest, over the harbour, into Geaorgia Straight to the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island. My directions are very approximate, but those of you who are familar with these views will know how to interpret them, and those of you who haven't been will just have to come and see for yourself. It's days like today that I remember how lucky I am to be in such a perfect spot on the earth; mountains, rainforest and ocean. all on our doorstep. From my house, It was about 15 minutes to the base of grouse, then a 15 minute ride up the gondola to the top and then we were off on our hike. Wow
Goat Mountain
But it felt good to be hiking, and I thought; "Sure, I can do this!", so I kept going. It got even easier when, a bit past the trail head, my friend took Amelia (in her backpack) and I took the other backpack. Lance carried Amelia on the way down. This was my first real hike in over two years. I will be sore tomorrow, but it felt good today. I kept a reasonable pace-not too strenuous. the trail was very muddy in places, and very steep in places and coming down was dirty work. And Amelia did beautifully! About 4.5 hours overall in a backpack and never a complaint. she slept for a bit and for the rest of the hike she was chatting to my friend, or imitating her heavy breathing. I think she mostly chewed on her hand and her backpack on the way down (Lance just told me she was also chatty on the way down), she's still not got her right molars in, thought the left ones have been in for a long time.
At first, Amelia was splashing in little pools of water with her feet, then her hands, then this. I wasn't paying too much attention at first and I assumed she was dipping her forehead in the water as she does in the tub sometimes, but when she surfaced I realized that she was sipping up the water. Ah well, if eating dirt doesn't hurt her, this certainly won't!
learning to cope, but not to save. I had typed up this long post, then Amelia started to cry so I went to get her back asleep and during the 10 minutes I was gone, the computer spontaneously restarted. Arrgh. ok, here is what I wrote (I wrote it on paper last night).
I've been feeling comfortable with my parenting skills. So far, learning to be a mother has been mostly a process of watching my interaction with Amelia, guiding her and playing with her. However, learning to be a housewife has not been as easy as I'd've thought. Planning meals, doing dishes and laundry and cleaning all while guiding and playing with Amelia takes some doing. Recently, I've been having trouble when it came to our weekly grocery shop. I wouldn't know what to get, so we'd get what we thought we could use. This left me struggling during the week to think of what to make with what we had. And since I'm not big on leftovers, with a few exceptions, this was a daily experience. (an aside, I used to love to plan meals in my head during the day, 'til I got pregnant and couldn't think about food. I could still prepare it and eat it, just not think about it). The past two weeks, I've made menus and lists, and now I've made a master list. So now, even if I don't have time to plan the week ahead, I can take this list and be sure I'll get enough for the week. And I have about 10 basic meal ideas to choose from if I don't plan meals in a week. Yay!I've also started doing little chores while Amelia bathes; tidying in the bathroom, or folding the laundry. I can do this without being more than 10 feet away and able to see and talk with her. I can get chores done while Amelia is awake and contained, and still interact with her. Win-win.I know these are the little time-saving devices that people, mothers, have been doing for centuries, but ahh, I am pleased with myself!
sun baby
hammertime
Our landlord has been building a table and Amelia has been helping. Here she is helping put some of the tools away. He's been "teaching" her about woodworking, also about Elvis. He threatened to get her an Elvis CD for a gift, and has been trying to get her to say "Elvis". So far she can say el(v). Mostly, though, he's been someone else for her to glom onto during the witching-hour. Thank you!
I don't quite know what happened to me last week, yes I was a little busier, but others around me are doing much more, and yes Amelia's been teething, but mostly that's meant that I haven't cleaned or crafted as she's stayed awake much later than usual. Somehow, though, last week I just felt completely lost. I'm better yesterday and today though. I went out, by myself for the first time in a long time (other than little trips to the library and whatnot). My friend K. invited me to a craft night with some of her friend. It was so nice! And contrary to what some people think, I didn't get stressed about leaving Amelia, I knew she would most likely be awake when I got home, but I just wasn't worried. (I know Lance takes good care of her, and that never worries me.) She'd been up till midnight for two nights already, and by the time I left she had already had 1/2 hour of sleep so I knew she'd be fine. As we were driving home, I was saying how I knew that I was always the one to be stressed by separation, not Amelia, and that I knew that she was able now to communicate her needs a bit better. Yeah, so. I got home, she was awake and happy. As expected. But, I found out that when she woke up, (15 minutes after I left) she cried for 20 minutes. I know she was fine with Daddy, but that he just couldn't nurse her. (I still nurse her to sleep and I think she just wanted a 'top-up', so to speak.) I felt much better after my night out, and I realize that I really should get out once in a while, even if I don't want to be away from Amelia. I do want to write about the pictures I've posted, but not right now. Except to say that the one of her her with her eyes closed is her latest trick. We call it winking. Molli taught it to her first, and what she does is squint her eyes closed, a number of times in a row. A cross between a squint and an eye-flutter. Very cute, especially when she pairs it with her 'tough' face, (she scrunches up her lips and nose and eyebrows, we tried to get a picture of it altogether).ok, more later, thank you and good night!
wink!!
