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 :)