I’m addicted

to this website. I am absolutely fascinated with the whale shark and curious as to how long these ones actually are.

Georgia Aquarium

I could sit there and watch it for hours.

I’ve been curious as to how much time is ‘too much’ to spend in extra-curricular activities. Most people would think I was talking about my kids, but I’m not, I’m talking of my dh.

It’s hunting season, I’ve been through it before, and I’m sure I’ll go through it again. He loves hunting, I knew that completely when we got married and understood it. It’s wonderful to get out into nature and snag a deer or elk that’ll feed the family for a year to come. When we first had kids he settled down on the hunting, mainly because his work at the time didn’t allow him the time off to hunt and be with his family, so he had to make a choice.

Fast forward to this year with him being in hockey 2-5 X/week, hunting in between, deacon course once a month, building cupboards, building bunk beds, oh, and a little thing that happened, we adopted a newborn. I’ve not resorted to calling him a jackass, in fact, I’m very pleased with myself that I brought it up in a very calm manner, expressing my concern, my feelings and laying it out there. And he agreed, and hasn’t done a whole lot about it . I should say that, he didn’t go hunting yesterday, but only because #1, it’s illegal to hunt on Sundays here, and #2, he had his deacon course.

I’ve always been a stickler about making sure my kids aren’t in too many activities. Not only because it tires them out, but it wears on the family time too, which I think is extremely important. But to have a dh that spends on average 11 hours a day away from his family (actually outside the home), for many days in a row, and then sleeps another 8 on top of that, then has deacon homework on the computer for a couple of hours, oh an of course eating, there isn’t much left for us.
I hope he gets it soon, or we’ll be having yet another talk and I can’t say I’d be very calm.

Why is cloth diapering so oddly thought of?

I’m an avid cloth diaper freak.  I’m not judgmental anymore about people who don’t cloth diaper, and I’m not willing to pay expensive service fees, but I love cloth diapering.  But let me tell ya, it has been a nightmare and a half attempting to cloth diaper this time around.  Not only has it become very expensive to get new diapers (I resorted to sewing my own to skeeve around this), but finding anything to do with cloth diapers is almost impossible.

When I had my girls, I’d just run to Walmart, grab the pail for $5, flushable liners, and a handful of plastic pants for $3/3 and I was done.   Now, I live in a ‘designer’ era where diapers are about $15 + a piece, fancy, and plastic pants have gone by the wayside unless your kids is 3 and still in diapers.  I’ve asked, begged, and beat my chest trying to find a place that sells them at a reasonable price.  If I go to a fancy store, I can get diaper ‘covers’ (the fancy new term for plastic pants) for about $8 a piece.

I begged people to tell me if they’ve seen any and I had some even tell me, “I swear I’ve seen them at ~so-and-so giant store~ and ~another giant store~ when in fact they either don’t sell them, or sell them in size 2, or 25 lbs.  Not a problem in 2 years, but for my 8 lb Sweet Pea, that’s a tad large.  It was suggested to try ~used online selling place~ and Freecycle to see if either of them would pan out.  ~used online selling place~ was great, I ‘won’ 2 different auctions and have them on the way, hoping they both fit my mini-man.  Freecycle came through immensely.  A lady emailed me to say she had 2 boxes of diapering stuff, but the only way I could get the pants is if I took the entire thing.  Hell, I’m all for it.

Boy was I in for a surprise.  Oh don’t get me wrong, it was all in fine shape, clean and well taken care of.  But who the hell needs like 6 dozen freakin cloth diapers?  When she said 2 boxes, she meant 2 boxes squished right full of beautiful diapers, a wad of medium plastic pants, a couple of handfuls of small plastic pants, and even flat diapers!  I’ve not seen so many in my life!

I thought I was set, I really did.  I was all gung-ho to start and sorted everything, washed everything and set it all up in his room only to find out that NONE of the plastic pants fit his skinny little legs yet. He’s just too little right now .  I hate, no I loathe disposables.  I can’t stand the nasty little beads that are in them, can’t stand that they don’t breathe and can promote diaper rash, and the fact that they are horrible for the environment.  I cringe when I think of how many I have put into the dump with Sweet Pea.  He’s 46 days old, and is changed on average 6 times a day – whoa …. that’s 276 diapers I have thrown in the landfill.   Man, I gotta fatten this kid up, but only time will help that.

I have no patience for this …. dangit kid, grow a bit already will ya?!

Smashing Halloween party

We attended a Halloween party last night and it was a lot of fun.  We’re tired today, and Sweet Pea is being a pain because he stayed up too late, but it’s all good.  I went as a hippie, didn’t really pull it off well, dh went as Rudolph hiding himself during hunting season (yes, my dh is weird like that – he put his camo clothing on and then threw some flashing Reindeer antlers on, it was a crack up for us!), Bing was a Duck, Punk was a lizard and Sweet Pea was Tee-eye-double-guh-rrrrrrrrr (trying not to advertise *snort*).

We were the first to arrive and found out later that T, miss guru party hostess, always tells her family that the party is ½ hour before it actually is because they are constantly late.  So when we arrived, she was rather surprised as we aren’t family (we recently met them) and were on time, which meant she was still in planning/organizing mode!LOL!  We helped them out and other guests started arriving ½ hour later (right on time?!).

Sweet Pea was exhausted before we came so in complete ignorant bliss, I had hoped that he would sleep through the entire thing in his car seat.  Silly, silly me.  The little bugger (I say that lovingly of course) woke up within 20 minutes and was a serious pain.  I mean a literal one, as we had to carry him around all night (we only stayed 2 hours), and carrying an 8 pound wiggling bowling ball around for an hour is extremely hard on the joints and back, never mind the thought of trying a pomegranate vodka drink or eating delicious hummus.  It was definitely decided that I’m going to get our sitter used to him as I will never do that again.  Even though it was a family-type party (apple bobbing & pinata for kids and everything!) I’d leave him at home, he’s just a party pooper!

I have to update about the adoption conversation too.  My AW returned my call the next day and told me that a subsequent adoption can occur 3 to 6 months after finalization.  And because of my sheer shock, I forgot to find out what exactly that means!LOL!  Does that mean after the court documents are signed? or after the paperwork through the office is completed? what?!  So, if I understand it right, we could adopt again in about 6 months or so.  WOOHOO!  In all my excitement, I forgot to talk with her about placing a child older than Sweet Pea.  It seems silly to have such a gap between kids, so we really want to change that.  Sweet Pea won’t care about his birth order, he’s too young, but I’m afraid they may consider too highly the birth order of the child(ren) being placed (yes, I put that plural for a reason).  What would be odd is the child(ren) being placed will have a messed up birth order anyway as most kids, like Sweet Pea, are oldest children, and are being placed, like Sweet Pea, into a family with older kids so they are slammed into being the youngest.  Of course Sweet Pea, again, won’t even care that he was an oldest child at birth and the youngest at placement. It’s too early, but an older child knows.

The reason I put plural is mostly how dh has been acting lately.  I’ve never seen him like this, but Sweet Pea has really changed how his ‘final decisions’ are, in fact I think most of those ‘decisions’ have been thrown out the window.  We were talking about more kids (of course) and I snarkily said that we’d never get more because he doesn’t want to get rid of the truck.  He got this ‘well-listen-here-missy’ look on his face and said, ‘actually I’ve been thinking about selling the truck AND the trailer’.  Well, don’t I feel sheepish.  It seems he really has seriously been considering having more than 4 kids.  WOOHOO!

Just imagine my house with as many kids as I want (6 … maybe 8 ).   Giant cube van sitting outside, toys everywhere, coupons clipped like crazy, thrift store business thriving solely on my income, and 6 to 8 happy kids playing like mad people.  Ah bliss.

Can I do it again?

Some may think I’m insane, others would just chalk it up to it being me.  I want to adopt again, and soon.  But I don’t want another infant just yet, but a toddler to bridge the giant gap between Punk and Sweet Pea.  Another small fry to add to the brou-ha-ha around here.  What could be better?

I’ve already put the call into our AW to get some questions answered (voice mail) and I’m curious as to how she’ll react.  I can’t imagine that we’d be the only family wanting to adopt so soon after being placed with an infant.  I’ve heard rumours that they wait an entire year after placement to consider placing again.  I wonder if there’s an appeal process for that?

I think my idea behind wanting to adopt so soon is so we can place a child easier in between the 2 kids and not have such a huge gap between.  The older Sweet Pea gets the less likely CPS is going to want to place a child between as they are a bit stickler about birth order …. sort of, they don’t mind messing up the order of the kids they place, but the order of our own is often never ‘adjusted’ through placement.  I truly think that should be our decision, but I do understand the implications of doing such a thing.

I’ve won my first items off of ~major internet used listings site~.  I’m pretty happy with it too.  It seems to be a bit too easy.  I may end up doing a lot of Christmas shopping on there too if the price is right.  We’ve been looking for an adapter to play our ~major personal game player~ games onto the same game affiliates main console (yeah, I still won’t advertise for them ).  It’s a special adapter that I’ve recently found out is no longer being made.  Which can drive up the price of the used variety on such sites as I’ve mentioned above or even ones IRL.  Not fun when you really want such a contraption.  I could probably get it for about $40 when it was around $100 new, so that’s not too bad I guess.  The only issue I have is buying used there is a chance the item may stop working or mess up in short time after purchase, much like the game controller we have that is less than 3 months old, but is not returnable.

Sweet pea is 6 weeks old now and is starting to purposely smile at me.  It just melt my heart lemme tell ya.  It’s still too new to get any real pictures of because he has little control of it, but when the moment comes that I can bring that smile on demand, I’m going snapping crazy!  It’s such a beautiful smile with his huge eyes, *sigh* it’s sweet.

I’m finishing up the thank-you cards for all the baby gifts.  It’s unbelievable the amount of people that gave us stuff with this whole ordeal.  It made dh and I both wonder if people would’ve done so if he had not been adopted, or if the time span between the kids wasn’t so large.  I know immediate family and some friends would have, but the extent of who bought for us (is it ‘who’ or ‘whom’?) is unreal!

Bing & Punk are doing awesome with Sweet Pea.  They are like little mothers.  I do try to curb Bing being too much of a mother as she tries to do things that, being a child herself, she should not do (swinging him around holding under his arms ).  I’ve had to reprimand her quite a bit about trying things she’s just not strong enough, or her hands aren’t big enough to handle.  They are adjusting okay to the room-in situation too.  We thought it would go off without a hitch, I can’t think of why the hell we would think that.  Since he’s been home (almost a month!!), the girls have not had a week where they weren’t tired in the morning because they stayed up giggling and playing.  The room has become a test situation for dh and I because we were planning to build bunk beds but wouldn’t want to commit to that without knowing if they could room together okay.  It’s almost going too well really.

I’m learning French too.  I do have a bit much on my plate, but I’ve decided that this is something I’m going to do because I want to, not because I have to (like my regular school work).  It’s a conversational French so there isn’t testing and such, but there is homework.  But it’s been fun to do.  Je ne parle pas Français tres bien, mais j’essayerai.

I hate update posts

I hate, hate, hate them, I loathe them … I … okay, you get the picture. Update posts to me mean I haven’t set aside the time for me to flush my brain, or induce thought vomit in too long a time and then I have to do an AIO post (all-in-one for those not in on the cloth diapering lingo). I need this time, I really, really enjoy blogging, I just have to make time for it. This kind of post always ends up being a mixture of update, rant, and general blabbering, whereas my other posts have focus … wait, shit, no they don’t …. right on!

Last night dh and I actually spent a bit of time together, and we watched The DaVinci code. What an excellent movie, and yet another great performance by Tom Hanks. I haven’t read the book yet, but will plan to in 2010 in between blogging . I definitely realized that Tom Hanks is in a league of his own. Most actors have trouble leaving behind their previous characters played, meaning most of their characters have too similar qualities among them. But Mr. Hanks is different every time. Pauly Shore is on one end of the spectrum (though still amusing), and Tom Hanks is on the other end. Not many women rank up there either, but that isn’t because of the women, but more because of the roles women get. Men over 40 or 50 can get awesome roles, but women have a little more trouble unless they are unbelievably gorgeous.

Back to the Code. I haven’t quite figured out what all the hype was about with the book yet, maybe there is more in the book, but I just don’t get the brou-ha-ha over a fictional book/movie, especially when it’s an exceptionally written book. I’ve read Dan Brown’s other book Angels and Demons and loved his writing, he’s a brilliant writer and must be a phenomenal historian, or at least is great at extensive research. Even as a Catholic, I loved his book.

I am now officially a soccer mom. Not that my kids are in soccer, but I have the wagon for it now. Yup, we bought a minivan. I really enjoy driving it too, plus the gas mileage rocks. We get on average 9.6 L/100 km (25 mpg), so that is much better than my truck.

Tell me why is it that guys just don’t see what *needs* to be done in a house? I can tell you that my dh is an awesome guy, cooks when I ask, gets up once a night for feedings (Sweet Pea gets up 3X/night), and plays with the kids constantly. But most of that is because it is asked of him (with the exception of playing of course). We need some groceries, he knows it, but assumes I will get it. Bing & Punk have run out of pants 3 X now, he knows it, but never puts the laundry through a full cycle (he’ll switch if he wants to wash his hockey or hunting stuff). The garbage is full, he sees it, but stuffs more in so no one can lift it, and doesn’t take it out. That’s not to say he doesn’t do things when asked, he never grumbles about helping out, but why does he have to be asked? Is it a guy thing? Also, why don’t the lives of men change much with the addition of a child? My dh still goes hunting when he wants and then plays hockey up to 4 X per week, and then wonders why I tell him it’s too much. I get it that he needs time away, absolutely, do it, but the responsibilities have changed too much for him to think that he can really continue on like he used to. He asked me ‘permission’ to go hunting this week because I ragged on him about his excessive time away last week. I told him I didn’t want him to ask permission, but to figure out for himself what is too much for his family.

Another ‘tell me why’ is why is it when I get a decent sleep with Sweet Pea that I want to nap, yet when I get a bad sleep I can’t nap? That’s actually quite annoying, especially considering I have just gotten over the guilt of wanting to nap. I need a nap.

To buy a minivan or not to buy a minivan, that is the question

Ok, it’s not really the question, but I wanted a quirky title .

We’re definitely getting a minivan. And oddly enough, we’re sticking with the ~domestic popular automotive maker’s~ brand. I always thought the first one I would go for would be an import, but the prices on those buggers isn’t worth it to me. Yeah, I get it, they resell for high too, but I’m not paying $30,000 for a van with 70,000 km (44,000 miles) when I can get a domestic one, just about as good (less doo-dads & extras), with 15,000 km (9,000 miles) for $20,000. Hmmm, not much of a decision there. The only thing is to find which dealership is going to give us a good deal on our trade in.

Dh is thinking about parking our truck though instead of trading in his commuter-car. His idea is noble in that he wants to preserve the life of our better vehicles. His commuter-car is reliable, but a pile of ca-ca to be honest and I don’t care if the beast ends up with 300k on it, it didn’t cost that much. But when you’ve spent $30,000 on a truck, driven nicely (by me ), and $20,000 on a minivan, it’s hard to have to drive them so much. He’d have to either drive the truck or the van as his commuter car (he drives 3,500 km/month on average as a sales guy). The truck gets 18 mpg on average, and the van would get around 25 mpg, so the more obvious choice for that would be the van. Of course we’d trade off if I needed to do groceries or do after school driving with all 3 kidlets.

Dh is actually dealing on a van as I type. He’s seeing which place will give him the best deal, so he’ll go deal with another guy too. I told him I’d have no part in the dealing part, not just because I can’t hack it, but because the ‘other’ guy annoyed the shit outta me. The bugger actually turned to me during our test drive to explain what ABS did… , you must be f’ing kidding me. The dumb ass was talking to a gal that has rebuilt a carburetor, like I don’t know what ABS is dickhead, I’m just a woman, right? Oi… got off on a tangent there . There were other things he kept doing too that annoyed me, but there isn’t much I can do about it, the van was good, the deal may be good, so I’d have to live with the fact that I supported that dumb ass’ income.

So, I guess in the next week or so we’ll be the new owners of a used van! Go soccer moms of the universe!

No time, no time!

He’s awake and cooing on the floor at Martha Stewart , so I have little time.

He’s home, he’s home, he’s home, and my house smells like baby, has bottles & receiving blankets scattered around, I’m stupid-tired, and poopy diapers line my garbage.  All is good in my world.  We had a few rough nights, but we’re slowly adjusting.  Had a good night sleeping last night, it was quite nice.  We have borrowed from some bottles that seem to work for him from some friends who are also adopting.  Unfortunately … well fortunately of course, they’ve been matched too with an 8 month old so they need their bottles back!  I’ll have to go buy my own! *snort*

Oddly enough, we have been informed that a shower is being thrown for us by dh’s family.  A sweet, sweet thought, but I’m not a fan of showers, especially if men aren’t allowed (which drives me nuts!).  If the guys are allowed and it’s just an informal party then absolutely, lets have fun, but it’s also the thought that these events are there solely for the purpose of mooching stuff off of people, making them buy something to come to it, I’m not comfy with it.  I was trying to suggest that it be a ‘find used stuff for us’ kinda thing so everyone’s not spending a fortune for everything, but I don’t think the suggestion was taken.

Darnit, and typing with 1 hand is hard!  But he’s really cute!