Our family portraits

I booked a photo shoot for the family at the Real Canadian Superstore months ago and the appointment was the week I had my tooth infection. So... I obviously couldn't be in the photos since my face looked stupid ;)

A friend of mine, who has taken a bunch of great photos in the past of Kiernan and for Apples'n'Oranges, agreed to have us come see her in the week before Christmas, and despite us being late, and it being Kiernan's cranky time of night, we got some photos I'm really happy with.

Her prices are SUPER reasonable so if anyone is looking to have portraits done, I'd be happy to send you her information :)

A year in review

I've seen this meme on a couple of blogs and decided to do it too. You take the first sentence of the first blog post of every month and list it. Turns out, I use my titles as part of my first sentence so I had to cheat on a couple of occasions and include the title as part of the sentence.

If you decide to try this meme too, leave me a comment, I'd love to come and see!

January - Pumping has been really hurting my breasts so now that we have found a bottle that Kiernan will take I decided it was time to try giving him formula.

February - Last night Eric and I went to a workshop on baby sign - it was really great!

March - I was thinking the other day that I don't record any of Kiernan's firsts, or any of the things that he does anywhere but in this blog.

April - Kiernan has found his voice.

May - So I am obsessed with mom blogs and mom web sites lately.

June - You know you need a date with your husband/partner when... ... you're sick of being told you look really nice when all you've done is combed your hair and put on clothing with no spit up.

July - This weekend was so relaxing at the cottage that the only photo I got of Kiernan all weekend was him playing in his new car

August - This lover of a/c spent the hottest day ever (ok maybe it wasn't but it kinda felt like that ;) at the cottage sans a/c.

September - How to make being at work a bit more enjoyable... WINNING PRIZES! ;)

October - Things I miss while being at work.... Kiernan being so tired he falls asleep in his high chair.

November - Throwback thursday - Halloween 1981.

December - I've been horrible at blogging lately so this post comes a few weeks after it actually happened (I was shamed to see that I had only two sets of photos from the entire month of November - sigh)

The holidays ain't what they used to be

I remember they days when the holidays were relaxing. Even when I had a million things to go to and do... I still felt like I rested. And I realize, it's just a whole different game with a baby in tow.

I guess I didn't notice last year because I was on mat leave and because I was just generally exhausted anyways with a baby that woke up every half hour all night :P But this year, I realize that even though I've been off work for 1.5 weeks, I don't think we've had any down time at all. Gone are the days when you could recuperate the next day by sleeping in until noon.

And I'm one of the lucky ones who got Dec 21 to Jan 3 off without having to take holidays. I feel so greedy but next year, I'm taking extra days. I'm taking days when there aren't any events going on. And I'm going to work on getting used to the fact that when you have a baby who is go go go all the time, you just don't get to sit and relax all that much (it's kind of amusing to note that one of the only things that will stop K from his constant running around is to sit down and watch Diego. go go! ;)

Happy New Year everyone! My new year's resolution this year is to try to do a little bit less. You?

Xmas is crazy!

Another Xmas gone - crazy how fast it came and went. It was a blast to watch Kiernan helping everyone open presents and play with all his new toys. But it sure is a challenge to lug a child to event after event. Even for Kiernan, who isn't that "locked in" to a schedule really seemed overwhelmed by the changes in his schedule and all the excitement.

And I really realize how hard it is to do everything we did before kids. There are up to 7 "events" to go to in 3 days. Makes me tired to even think about it. But regardless, here are some uber cute photos :)





What's more fun than a box with a hole for your face? :)

No, it's ok, I can play with it through this hole.


Giving his baby cousin a kiss

Wordless Wednesday: It's for you!

Happy Boxing Day - Come check out the 25% off sale at Apples'n'Oranges that's on until January 2! :)

Our budding artist

Have I ever raved about our childcare provider? She's fabulous and I'm beyond thrilled that we found her and that she was able to take Kiernan. I always feel comfortable with him there and given some stories I've heard about other daycares, it's really nice peace of mind.
But on to the real point of this post: the daycare party we went to tonight. I didn't even know there might be such a thing!
We went and got to mix, mingle and eat (yummy yummy things) with all the kids and their parents. She gave each of the kids a really nice gift and then all the parents were presented with the gifts that their kids had made for them at daycare. And despite the fact that Kiernan is only 15 months old, we still got a bag of goodies and I wanted to share a couple of the new adornments to our tree. Aren't they pretty? Aren't we lucky? :)


This one is a true work of genius. See how he left a window for view the piece from two points of view: the inside and the outside. But seriously, he got to shake shake shake the ball full of paint, and I'm sure he adored that! :)

Kiernan the professor

My dad cracks me up. Seriously. He randomly sent this to me tonight. Just in case you didn't realize it, that's Maxwell's equations, the heart of electrical engineering. And who knows, maybe Kiernan will actually follow in his grandpapa's footsteps, unlike his mother, and actually understand math ;)

Eco-wrap

So I've decided I'm going to not buy wrapping paper anymore.... why wrap everything up in paper just to get thrown out immediately when there are all kinds of other alternatives?

I'm not going to not use all the paper I pre-bought mind you, and I know that watching kids tear into paper is fun, so I think alternatives like newspapers might work. I'm also thinking of making some xmas bags by going and buying fun xmas fabrics for kids and making a bunch of different sizes. Heck, the bags might actually slow down some kids and be handy for older folk who can't get the tape up off the packages anyways!

So here's my question. Do you think people would buy homemade bags like that? Would you*? I will post prototypes once I've made some after Xmas with my hopefully new sewing machine. hehe

* By you I do not mean Lida or Jenny ;)

Kiernan and Santa

I was worried about this year's Santa picture, since so many kids cry at this age when they go near Santa. Kiernan was pretty wary to say the least, but considering some kids won't even go near Santa, I'm pretty happy with what we got.

Our scanner isn't hooked up so I just took a photo of the photo :) And by the way, if you're in Ottawa, I highly recommend the Place D'Orleans Santa - very realistic!

My little complex

In my life, I've had a lot of misfortune in the areas of my health. Not life or death health issues, but issues nonetheless. For example, the pink eye I had in Korea where my eye was so badly swollen I could barely see out of it and I had to go for antibiotics in the bum shots (because that seems to be the solution to all illness in Korea and I just had to keep my fingers crossed that they understood "I AM ALLERGIC TO PENICILLIN")

Then, there was the time that a ladybug bit me (about 6 years ago there was this weird infestation in Ottawa of a mutant ladybug from Asia that was supposed to be good for farming or something - they were brown instead of red with dots, but otherwise looked like a ladybug) and it gave me a strep infection in my finger. My finger swelled to twice it's size, then blistered and the skin all fell off and I had to see the doctor daily to make sure it wasn't turning into flesh eating disease. GAH!

Despite the fact that these things actually happen to me, I think that there are a number of people out there who think I'm a hypochondriac. Now, let me say, I do appreciate playing up a story to make it sound as dramatic as possible. But, generally, I don't think I have diseases I don't have. But I worry people think I'm a big faker.

All this is preamble to tell you a bit more about my saga of the tooth infection. Tuesday my face started swelling. I thought that seemed a bit unusual, but really, not that big a deal. by yesterday morning it was even more swollen so I thought "I'll just check with the dentist". I call and ask if it's normal for my face to be swollen and am told probably not and I should come in so the dentist "can drain things". :P

I went in and he drained an abscess (ew) and it hurt - a lot! For a long time! And he said it might get more swollen for a bit but then I'd feel better.

Today I woke up and was horrified at how swollen I was! We took a picture, but it couldn't really capture how swollen I am. And I thought about posting it here but I'm not sure I can bring myself to, but I have proof that this thing has been insane and will email it to people who ask ;) But I do feel better and think I can probably even go back to work tomorrow without falling on my face tired after being there for 10 minutes.

Remember this little guy?

He's not quite so tiny anymore! :)

Who needs to go to work anyways?

After an eventful week last week of snow storms keeping me home, a
stomach flu, and an interview I only made it to work for not quite
2 complete days last week! Despite feeling pretty bad all weekend and
developing a tooth ache on Saturday I wasn't going to call in sick
again.

I woke up this morning at 5 with the tooth ache hurting like crazy! So
I took some drugs and after awhile managed to fall asleep for another
hour. By the time I woke up for the day I was ready to take more
drugs and it had only been 2 hours! I called the dentist because I
couldn't stand it and she made me an appointment for tomorrow morning
to see the dentist hypothesizing that what might be happening was that
my tooth (the tooth causing the problems has a crown on it) might have
broken under the crown and was irritating the gums. And I took more drugs even though it hadn't been long enough. :P

I got to work and the pain was getting progressively worse. I brought
Kiernan's ambasol to work with me, but really, that wasn't doing
squat. So by 10 I called the dentist and begged to be seen today. I
went in for 10:50 and had some xrays done. Turns out the tooth wasn't
broken, I had a tooth infection! I don't think I'd heard of tooth
infections (without work having been done on them) until last week
when one of my co-workers had one - and I didn't think they were
catchy (which I said to my dentist, cuz, well, I'm me) and he laughed
and said no, that probably my root canal had failed.

Great. Woo! Now what? So he prescribed me tylenol 3s, antibiotics
and a referral to a specialist for right away. But first he realized that the inflamation of the infection had brought down the tooth in question lower than all the others so if I bit down at all I automatically hit it. Since it was a crown I got to sit there while he filed it down and down until it wasn't so high anymore. Fortunately he got there before the gold underside of the crown would have shown through - although having a gold tooth would have made me all hip or something I think? ;)

I headed right over to the endotologist (I still don't even know what
that is) and yay! got to have an emergency root canal do-over. He
went over the reasons root canals could fail 1) root not cleared out
to the end of the tooth 2) more than 1 root in the tooth and not all
of them had been cleaned out 3) root not filled densely enough to
prevent badness getting in. Guess which category my tooth fell into?
That's right - all three!! Weee!

Then, he freezes my tooth and I'm all excited because the pain will go
away.... but no, the infection/absess is so strong it's in the jaw and
he was never able to freeze it so that I couldn't feel it at all.
Fortunately it was frozen enough that for the most part I couldn't
feel his drilling. fiouf. I did learn a bit about what endotolists
do... one is that they use microscopes to do their work, and another
is that the thing at the end of the mircroscope is reflective so it
was reflecting what he was doing, including the mirror he was using so
I got to watch a lot of it. And let me tell you a) ew b) man teeth
are deep! and c) i really liked this guy, he was great and he was
nice, and he felt really bad that he hurt me sometimes because the
freezing just wasn't strong enough

So I'm home now, about to let the tylenol 3s take me away to la la
land and hoping that the infection doesn't fight back too hard. Cuz
really... I should go to work some time I think ;)

UPDATE: The drugs don't work. waaaahhhh. I've decided this is worse than labour - at least the drugs they gave me worked for that pain and I got breaks. sigh

Couch potato is fine with me!

Kiernan has learned to climb up onto the couch and likes to do it to watch tv. I have to say, Kiernan sitting still and not constantly burning the few calories he's willing to eat in a day doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

Except wait a minute...

Kiernan... sit down...


Didn't last long though....

Oh well... I guess I just need to accept I have to constantly chase after our little monkey, not sit and watch tv with a little couch potato ;)

Not so fun!

I've been horrible at blogging lately so this post comes a few weeks after it actually happened (I was shamed to see that I had only two sets of photos from the entire month of November - sigh)

The snow came really early this year and we got Kiernan all bundled up in his snowsuit and new boots to experience the snow. I'd heard all kinds of fun stories about kids being full of joy and wonder when they first experience snow so I was super excited! Out we went, we set him down, and realized... maybe we should have practiced with the new boots before we set him down in particularly tough terrain....

It never got any better after that...

the love of snow was going to have to come another day. And practicing with boots inside first seemed like a very good idea :)

yackety yack

Indulge me in some bragging this morning.

My weekly Baby Center email arrived the other day

Your 14-month-old: Week 3

"Ball," "dog," and "bye" may be your child's favorite — and only — words at this point, though some early talkers may have as many as 20 words in their vocabulary.

And I thought... 20? Ha! Kiernan says more than 20. So we started writing them down, just as a record of what he could do at this age. And lucky you, I'm sharing ;)

ball
soother
bottle
shoe
sock
door
car
bus
tv

mommy
daddy
grampa/papa
mom

eye
nose
mouth
teeth
chin
bum
toes

pasta
banana

kitty
duck
dog
puppy
kitty
cat
bear
book

moo
neigh
baa
boo
meow

more
up
down
no
peek
row
wow
oh boy
go go go
dodo
night night
boom
poo
all done/gone
buh-bye
santa
hi
it's a
the
whee
ding ding
beep
home

58 words - that we could think of ;)

On another happy note, finally heard from the doctor and K screened normal on the sweat test - so no Cystic Fibrosis. I never really let myself believe he could possibly have it so it wasn't an enormous relief, just a nice confirmation.

Happy Thursday!

Automatic no starts very young

I know a lot of men, ok maybe not just men, who have an automatic no. Anything you ask them gets a negative answer until you talk it through a bit more. Eric apparently was like this as a toddler so I guess it isn't surprising Kiernan has inherited this trait :)

"Kiernan, did you knock over that toy?"
"no"
"Kiernan, do you need a bum change?"
"no"
"Do you always answer in a negative fashion?"
"no"
Dora: Do you see a sign?
Kiernan: no
Dore: pause..... Right! There it is! ;)

They're generally questions you know he doesn't understand, he just knows it's a question and that no seems to be the right way to respond. CRACKS US UP!

There's a new contest over at the Apples'n'Oranges blog - go check it out!

Test results

are still not in! BOO! Even though I thought I'd have them by the end of last week.

Lucky for me, I've managed to not let it worry me at all. I'm irritated, but not worried. Hopefully rightfully so!

Not so fun for the little trooper

Our morning at CHEO went pretty well.... although not a fan of the 5 minutes of electrodes buzzing on his arm, Kman got through it pretty well. He then got to run around the hospital for half an hour while his sweat got collected in an interesting little contraption strapped to his arm. There was a bit of blue dye on the contraption which turned the sweat blue. There didn't seem to be alot in there at the end of the 30 minutes, but it was enough - so yay!
Then we had to have the blood test. They took a lot of blood! :( Two full vials. That'd be like, 20 vials for me! Maybe. I think. Anyways, it sucked and he cried, but not uncontrollably like some of the other babies we heard - cuz K man is such a little trooper with all the tests we've had to put him through. And as always, I love CHEO. All the people we deal with are so fabulous! So give them money or something! ;)
We should find out by the end of the week what the results of the test are - negative of course ;) I will keep you all posted.

Who needs a radio

When you can just grab a phone, hit redial, and dance your heart out to the beep beep beep?

Until you have your heart broken when daddy takes the music machine away.

Throwback Thursday : ballet

Here is me reenacting part of a ballet recital we'd just gotten home from, using my sister as a prop :)

I took ballet for several years I think, but the most memorable moment of the entire experience was from before this, when, at a recital my dance instructor explained to the entire crowd that I wasn't holding a position correctly because my legs weren't straight. I guess she had to make sure people didn't think she was a bad ballet teacher and scar her young student for life in the process :P

Weight loss - an update

So I haven't lost any weight, BUT, I have an update this week! I have made progress.

I a) bought a new scale. Something that was very necessary!
and b) went and worked out today on my lunch with a coworker for the first time in almost 2 years!!

It's a start, and I'm proud. Because I hate hate hate working out!

I'm a NaBlah dropout

Not sure if anyone noticed, but I'm not managing to blog every day, so I'm dropping out of the Nablopomo.

I took lots of cute photos of Kiernan this weekend though :)

How can you ever want to go through that again?

A lot of bloggers seem to be pregnant right now - and feeling REALLY sick. The conversations about how to get through the morning sickness have been bringing back some of the memories of my pregnancy and just how awful I felt.

I also have an acquaintance who is pregnant, with her 4th, and sick for the first time. And thinking about it, and trying to give her tips and suggestions, reminds me how miserable I was. And yet, I don't REALLY remember. I remember that I would be moaning and groaning and crying in misery. And I remember enough that it's still a favourite line of mine to offer to go through labour for anyone if they would just go through the pregnancy for me ;) But because I don't REALLY remember it, and because I don't feel it NOW, I don't think it will stop me from going through it again. Even if I have another non-sleeping baby. Because despite the fact that I have the amazing non-sleeping baby, he's also the light of my life (oh how I hate to be so cheesy).
Nothing gives me joy like hugs from my little guy, or watching him discover a new game (currently, his favourite is bye bye *wave wave* (turns around and then turns back) hi! hi! *wave wave* bye bye *wave wave* (repeat :)

Contest time people!

It's time to start thinking about Xmas presents and what better way to get them for people than to win them! ;) Contests, here I come. Check out all the great ones coming up at 5 minutes for mom and I'll post about more as I hear about them

You're going the wrong way!

Kiernan had another doctor's appointment yesterday and I was hoping that in the 1.5 months since his last doctor's appointment he would have broken past his 19.7 lb mark and hit that glorious 20lbs that most boys hit by the time they're like, 8 months old :P

Unfortunately, it was not to be. He is down to 19 lbs and that's not good. It's not horrible. It's not earth-shatteringly awful, but, it's not to be ignored.

The most likely scenario, and the one I'm 99.99 % sure it is, is that he's too active for the amount of food he eats. He's a picky eater, and I'm imagining that because he's always had such a sensitive tummy it's not always FUN for him to eat. On top of him not being a big eater, as he's started to wake less in the night, he's been dropping the amount of formula he drinks. Every time he drops a night feed he's dropping calories per day because he doesn't replace any of that in the amount he drinks when he's awake!

What's a mom to do?! Last night he fell asleep in the car without his nighttime bottle (not that we can get him to have more than a few ounces at bedtime anyways) so he woke up at midnight hungry. We gave him almost 8 oz! He'll drink it in the middle of the night, but do we want to encourage him feeding night instead of when he's awake??

So we'll be adding olive oil to his food again, trying to encourage him even more strongly to have milk during the day, and hopefully we'll get him to gain some weight.

In the meantime, we now have new tests we have to take him for to rule out the .01% chance it's something else. These fun options include cystic fibrosis and celiac disease. So November 21 we'll be heading back to CHEO for blood tests and a sweat test (can you imagine them having him run on a treadmill with sweat dripping down? ha ha). Oh well, I'm sure it can't be worse than the milk scan.

Any ideas on what to feed a picky eater who doesn't like to eat grown-up food and can't have anything with dairy or soy - please share! :)

I'm going to be scrapbooking until I'm 105 if I don't find some shortcuts

Angela at mommy bytes is giving away six HP Photo Books.

I did one of my honeymoon through KodakGallery but these sound really cool too. And even though I love to scrapbook, I'm never going to get everything I need to get scrapbooked done, so this would be ideal for our vacation in BC and Alberta last spring.

Multi syllabic baby

Even thought he somehow managed to have some of his first words be "itsa" and "da" for the most part when Kiernan has been talking he only uses the first sound in a word. Baaa can be ball, book, bottle. biii is a bird. teee is tv. sna is snack. do is door. mo is more, etc. the odd exception had him using a different syllable in the word. tee, other than being tv can all be kitty.

He was started to make exceptions in our names. Maaa-y, Daaa-y. And then all of a sudden the other day, we have Daaaddy! Daddy! Daddy! SO cute. I'm still Maaa-y, except when he decides he should also call me Daddy ;) But we have more, we have banananana, and we have titi, which sounds rude but is really kitty or tv :) He's so darned clever that Kiernan. It's all the crying and not sleeping - I'm sure of it.

On a total aside, the last two nights I've made pasta recipes from the most recent Chatelaine and they are DELICIOUS! If you get chatelaine, try them out - we had the pork peanut one and the lemony one. yum yum yum yum! (the internet rocks - I found the recipes online to link to :)

He's all about meeting milestones

Hello from BabyCenter!

Your 13-month-old: Week 4

Spirited and mild-mannered toddlers alike will experiment with ... how shall we say it? ... undesirable behavior. If your toddler indulges in fits of screaming, hitting, and biting, you can take some solace in knowing that his development is right on track. Discipline can be a challenge with kids this age, so try to build a little personal time into your schedule each week as a way to refuel your patience tank.

***

Today we had meltdowns at friends', at the grocery store, in the parking lot, and lots of standing and jumping on chairs and other obviously mischievious behaviour. FUN! :P But it's ok, the internet tells me it's normal ;)

I love fruitcake!

While most people run around avoiding fruitcake in their wedding cakes and as Christmas presents, I've found a group of friends who love it just as much as me! And today is fruitcake making day. Off I go to mix 8 lbs of dried and candied fruit with a mere 3 cups of flour to make cakes that can last for years and never go bad. And get more and more delicious as time goes on!

It's the first sign that Christmas is coming. YAY! :)

NaBloPoMo

I'm taking part in NaBloPoMo. See?

View my profile on NaBloPoMo


Now, I'm still figuring it out exactly, but here's the deal, I'm going to be posting a blog post a day all month (that'll get me back into the swing of this!) Hopefully it won't be quantity over quality, but we'll see. Fortunately, I'm all about the photos - and I'm sure you'll all enjoy seeing tons of photos of the K-man!

Check out my page, and be my friend, and come back to read the rest of my interview questions from Nutmeg, about how sleep-training is going, and about my weight frustrations.

And if you haven't seen it yet, you have until tomorrow to enter my giveaway for a shirt from Apples'n'Oranges.

GRRRR

Help! There's a dino on the loose (or maybe he's a gator ;)






Dressing K up and traipsing him about town was tons of fun. Maybe next year we'll let him try some candy :)

Throwback Thursday : Halloween edition

Halloween 1981. I'm a pirate (with the most piratey looking leg-warmers you've ever seen) here with my sister Farmer in the Dell. I LOVE the pumpkin!! :)

Favourite bloggy giveaway so far

Is for an apron from the apronista.

I want to win!!

Or, anyone can feel free to buy me this for xmas ;) (in a 1x please)

hehe. Somehow I'm not so sure that'll actually work, but it was worth a shot :)

Love a good bloggy giveaway!!

** Congratulations to the winner Ulibarri family! Keep up to date on Apples'n'Oranges news, and be entered into our November newsletter draw for a $10 gift certificate, by signing up to our newsletter by emailing info(at)apples-n-oranges(dot)com.***

Time to enter another zillion contests during the Fall Y'all Bloggy giveaway!!

In self-promotion of my new business ;) I'm giving away a Rock & Rattle tie shirt. The winner can choose the boy or the girl version (the size may have to depend on what's in stock), and the contest is open to anyone, anywhere :) Just comment here, and if you want, I'd love to hear what stuff you like the most from Apples'n'Oranges.

Check out the Apples'n'Oranges blog for the chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Apples'n'Oranges.
You also don't want to miss my business partner Some kind of Wondermom's giveaway of a super fun Brat couture shirt!

Good luck!

Kiernan's first REAL haircut

First, mommy had to prove to grammy/gramma that Kiernan needed a hair cut.

Some cute hair accessories might have been in order if this had been a little Kiernana, but Kiernan was ready for a little boy cut :)

We headed out to first choice - did you know you get baby's first haircut free there? I didn't!

Kiernan was a super trooper - the other hairdressers couldn't get over how good he was. He didn't cry once and he barely squirmed at all sitting on my lap.

He did remain super serious throughout though.

So cute! Makes him look way older too in my opinion.

This is not the hairdresser who cut his hair. She just wanted her picture taken ;) K's hairdresser is in the background :)

They even gave us a baby's first haircut certificate with a lock of hair attached. I was super impressed and would recommend First Choice to anyone for a first hair cut!