Travels with Alice

Alice and I had our first solo trip to Vancouver on Wednesday/Thursday.  We had an appointment at the breastfeeding clinic and Di was in town for a couple of days so we planned a lunch with Siobhan and Thalia.  It was also Alice’s first lunch with the girls and she did really well.  No fussing at all, slept for most of it.  She was probably exhausted from keeping me up all night.  She fussed all night and I only got sleep between 2:30 and 5:45.

And as of last night, I think we are officially done with breastfeeding.  The appointment had not gone well.  She hardly gets anything out while sucking (11mls after 1/2 hour) and apparently when I get the IUD that my OBGYN has recommended and will put in in 2 weeks, all my milk will dry up anyway.  To top it off, last night Sacha was playing around with the pump.  He has taken to showing me on himself how to pump.  He left the funnel part on the floor and when Andrew got up to check on Alice at one point last night, he stepped on it and it broke.  I will see how much the part is to replace, but if it is only going to be good for another 2 weeks and is not super cheap, then I am not going to replace it.  I should probably look into selling the pump as well because it was not cheap. 

We have no big plans for New Years.  Watch a dvd maybe?  I having been wanting to try to make tiramisu for a little while so I might try that as dessert tonight.  And get something for dinner that is not turkey or chicken.  I think we are done with poultry for a while.

Bribery

“Please, please, please pose for a photo in the extremely cute sweater that Baba knit for you.”

“I will give you a chocolate if you pose for this picture”

“I will give you two chocolates if you let us take a picture in the sweater Baba knit for Kai 30 years ago”

And done.  At least I know his price, which will come in handy when we try to do a family portrait tomorrow. 

 

Alice’s first Christmas Outfit.  Her first Christmas ornament is a silver penguin, so she had a little theme going. 

Merriest of Christmases

Sacha, Andrew and Alice are taking a break from today’s festivities for nap time.  I tried to have a nap but even though I am pretty tired, I could just not fall asleep.  Alice’s gift to us for Christmas was sleeping from 11:30pm to 5:45am last night.  That is the longest stretch of sleeping she has done yet.  A Christmas Miracle! 

Last night we had dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house.  My aunt Sandy made a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings which was delicious even though Sacha only ate two tablespoonfuls of cranberry sauce and two cookies. 

When we got home, we wrote a note to Santa, put out the Sparkle Oats we made for Santa’s reindeer (thanks Tina) and a box of chocolates for Santa. 

 

We were very luck because Santa wrote back.  He left lots and lots of presents and even left a couple of chocolates so Sacha could have one in the morning.

 

Notice how far I had to tilt this picture to make the tree look like it stands straight.  Maybe next year we won’t get a tree that was growing on a hill.   The turkey is baking in the oven, Mum is putting together a run bike for Sacha and I am again working on my year in pictures movie (up to 12 hours of fiddling now).

Man

This is Man.  Man is all that is glorious and good in the world.  You don’t ask what can Man do, it is more like, what can’t Man do.  The two best being, the ability to be thrown straight up in the air as well as the ability to be thrown off high places, like the top of the stair case. 

Man is also a party animal.  You can tell by his birthday hat parachute.  He lost his original parachute in a tragic off-balcony-into-bushes accident.  Strings were tangled, chute was ripped.  It was devastating, but he has gotten over it with several rounds of therapy.  There were a couple of parachute replacement material trials.  Shopping bags were unsuccessful, as was a pillow case.  The party hat works pretty well and now he is an a perpetual state of “ready to party”.

On a semi-regular basis, the mundanity of household life becomes too much for Man and he goes on missions.  His last mission was a two week stint on top of the fridge.  Eventually he will hear the pleading cries of “Man Back Please” and be drawn home.  Of course his safe return is not a guarantee.  Man used to have two friends, Pink Man and Blue Man, sadly both of these Men never made it back from their dangerous missions.    We must pay our respects to these fallen soldiers who have gone missing in action.  We can only hope that they have not fallen into enemy hands but instead died they way they lived – valiantly. 

Three

Three from Lisa on Vimeo.

Gone Bananas

This weekend was full of fun.   On Saturday, we had our traditional extended family’s Christmas tea/lunch.  Sacha had so much fun playing trucks and running around with his older cousin, Jack.  We also had 3 little girls born in 2010 in the family and it was cute to see how much each of them have grown.  Makena was born in March, Chloe in June and Alice in November.  It is crazy to think that in such a short time Alice will be as big as the other two are. My brother and his girlfriend got engaged that day too.  We all knew it was only a matter of time but it is still pretty exciting.  I am hoping that they want to get married in a tropical location, like Hawaii or Cuba. 

On Sunday, we threw Sacha’s birthday party.  We were coming to town for the family gathering anyway and since all of our friends and their kids (so therefore, Sacha’s friends) live in Vancouver we thought we would take advantage of being in the city.  We had it at Go Bananas Indoor Playground.  We have taken Sacha there a couple of times before and he always has fun.  He was too nervous to climb up high in the climbing frame but he still like chasing everyone around and climbing on Uncle Nick.  His absolute favourite part was blowing out the candles on his cake.  He didn’t even eat any cake afterwards, which is crazy because sugar is his favourite.  Andrew and I were totally exhausted because neither of us, nor Alice slept well the night before but it all went well and I think all the kids had fun. 

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Bird Spotting

Sacha and I went for a walk today along the Davis Bay sea wall and I not only saw a new bird, I had my camera with me and was quick enough to take a picture.  Things were in my favour today!  This is a Black Turnstone.  There were lots of other birds there too, Surf Scoters for sure but I didn’t have my binoculars and couldn’t make positive ids.  Sacha liked the seagulls the best, but he kept calling them ducks and quacking at them.

One Month

Alice is one month old today.  I straight up stole this idea from Devon’s friend Katina, who took a picture of her daughter every month for the first year next to a huge teddy bear.  It was really cute to see her daughter grow and the teddy shrink over the year, so I am doing it too.

December 15th, 2010
One Month

It is hard to believe that it has already been a whole month.  It seems like yesterday she was born, but at the same time it also feels like she has always been here.

Don’t Buck Me

I went to my first Mommy and Me group yesterday.  It was good, hopefully we will get to meet some people up here.  They also run a tot drop in group too for older kids, so I will probably end up taking Sacha as well. 

I took Sacha to the dollar store yesterday to pick out decorations and goodie bag items for his birthday.   Goodie bags end up being pretty expensive for basically junk.  I am going to have to think of something more original for next year I think.  When we got home, Sacha wanted to watch Dora the Explorer.  Most kids shows I either kind of like or can at least stand to be in the back ground, but I hate Dora.  So I told him he could watch it, if he promised not to bug me while I put together the goodie bags.  He got to watch it, but I never did put the bags together because i realized that I hadn’t pumped in a while. Sacha gets little phrases that he repeats ad nauseum for a little bit (some times about an hour).  Yesterday’s phrase was “bug me” after thinking me saying don’t bug me was hilarious.  But only one out of 5 sayings of bug me sounded like “bug”, the rest sounded like “buck”.  So basically he was running around the house yelling buck me, buck me, buck me…  Andrew and I were laughing. 

Last night was rough.  I was fiddling around with a movie making program and got engrossed.  My master piece is only half done and I spend 4 hours on it from 10pm-2am last night.  Luckily it meant that I was wide awake for the 1:30am feeding.  For only the second time ever, Sacha woke up asking for Mum and Dad at 4:30am.  I am not sure if he had a bad dream or what.  But he was in our bed from 4:30am-6:00am when he got put back in his room because he squirmed that whole time and didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to play.  I am so tired.

Wise Little Buddha

I am not sure why this photo makes Alice look so much older than she is.  Probably because it looks like she is holding her head up.  In reality, the photographer photoshopped my hand out of the frame, that is why her right ear is a little funny looking, cause part of my hand is still left in. 

O Tannenbaum

We picked out our Christmas tree this afternoon.  Another cool reason to live where we do, the Lions Club grows trees on private property under some power lines and for $25, you go hike around, find the tree you want, they come and chop the tree down for you and drive it back to the warming hut.  You also get free hot chocolate, and the kids get marshmallows in theirs.  Or if you are Sacha “Hot Choc with Mallows”.  I think we got a good one.  Getting it home was a little sketchy.  We basically crammed it in the back of the new van because it doesn’t have a roof rack.  We also had Alice in her first Snuggly outing.  Until today we have always had her in her carseat either just as is, or snapped into her stroller.  It was good that we figured out how to use the snuggly, or the fact that she is just now big enough to use it.  Because the tree farm was quite hilly and rugged terrain.

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I used to pick and chose carefully which photos I put on this blog and which ones I put on Facebook, usually putting more up on facebook.  Now I think I am just going to both the same pics on both because I know some people read this but don’t have a fb account (Tina) and there are lots of people that see the pics on facebook that don’t read this. 

Yesterday, we were in town for a breast feeding clinic appointment.  We also got Alice’s passport application in.  Don’t get me started on what a waste of time and money infant passports are, however, we did get a really cute passport pic for Alice.  So cute in fact that when it was printed off, Andrew asked if he could get a 5x7 copy of it.  I will scan it in and post it later.

TV Delay

After 8 months, we finally cracked and called the cable company to hook us up.  We called last week, but yesterday was the first day that they could come out and install it.  However, of course cable was down for Roberts Creek last night, or that is what we were told, because we still have no cable.  We have two fancy cable boxes that don’t work.  Andrew didn’t get to watch the hockey game and I didn’t get to watch Survivor, which I am addicted to this season.  Luckily you can watch full episodes online, but global didn’t post the new episode until this morning.  I was checking repeatedly last night. 

At the same time, we have been doing a Netflix trial.  I love it.  Some of the movies are a bit random but there is a tonne of kids shows available and lots of cool documentaries.  There is always something to watch.  We figure we will give up cable again for the summer, but will definitely keep Netflix.

Magic Santa

I love the internet so much!  I saw this site as an add on another site and checked it out.  It is so cool. 

Here is the magic card Santa sent back to Sacha:

http://magicsanta.ca/player.html?code=GMDR7H

Of course Sacha wasn’t an name option, so I used Alexander, but it is still really cool.

‘Tis the Season

It is really cute. Sacha is really “getting” Christmas this year and it all started with the Christmas train.  Now almost every time he sees even a simple strand of Christmas lights, they get a “whoa” and when a house is done up really well they get a “woo-woo”.  Meaning, those are as good as the Christmas train lights. 

Tonight Sechelt had a Lights Parade down Cowry Street.  There weren’t too many people there but we heard that it was the first year they had run it.  We really enjoyed it.  A bunch of trucks covered themselves in lights and decorations and Santa Claus arrived riding on the back of a lit up fire truck. Sacha was waving and pointing and giving kisses.  He especially likes Frosty the Snowman.

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I didn’t put this pic in with the album but it really shows-off  Sacha’s love of lights.  It was hard to take because the lights don’t show up well with a flash and if he moves an inch without a flash he gets all blurry and of course he never stands still.  He is just learning about saying Cheese, but hasn’t mastered the posing for pictures part.

Yay! Christmas!

He also loves his advent Calendar and about 6 times per day we have to remind him that he only gets to open one door per day.  Today he brought it up to our bedroom from the kitchen to ask if he could have another one.

Body Parts

I have decided that Alice has Andrew’s eyes.  Not his eye colour, cause her eyes are still that newborn blue colour, but she has the same shaped eyes as Andrew. 

She definitely has my nose as well.  Which is shrinking back to normal thank goodness (my nose, not hers, hers is fine).  Who knew one of the weirder pregnancy symptoms is to have your nose get huge. 

Pretty much all my symptoms when away right when I gave birth and I have been feeling 100 times better than when I was pregnant.  However, now I am having the worst acne I have ever had in my life.  I have looked it up on the internet and this is a post-pregnancy symptom that can last for months.  Yuck.  It is gross and hurts and is on both my face and back.  I hope it clears out sooner than later.

Blessings

I had been reading this book since the summer, it is not long, it is not boring.  Things just kept getting in the way.  Plus i lost it for a while as well.  It is the second book I have read by this author and I liked it.  There were times when it would switch between flashbacks and present day and it wasn’t really obvious which one was happening always and the ending was pretty depressing.  But other than that, a decent read.