I finally got to meet stuporstar! She and her man stayed at our place, and she is exactly as sweet as she seems. I wish we could have spent more time together, but it was such a nice visit!

My friend Don found this, and in his own words, "Particle Physics in 5 minutes".

<3 Geekdom!

Nothing like waking up to a kid with a temperature of 39, projectile vomit, and a news story of a practically local decapitation with human flesh consumption to really kick the weekend off.

Today for the first time, Alex went pee in the potty!

I'm so excited! She's been showing some interest for a while, but would refuse to sit on the potty when offered, but today, she told me four times she had to pee and went to sit on the potty!

Ok, so maybe she had actually peed (pee'd?) in her diaper before each of those times and was really only identifying that the diaper was wet, but the one time she sat on the potty (for like 40 minutes because I read her stories and we played with toys while she was on there), she got up and there were a few drops in it!

I was really hoping she'd have a lightbulb moment when she first went pee in the potty, because she'd associate the trickle sound with it, and then it would be fun... but unfortunately a few drops didn't produce the trickle sound, so I'm hoping that the next time will go better.

If I can only get her trained before the end of the summer, it will cost me $100/month less for daycare!

Today I:
- got both kids out of the house and to Enchantaland by 8:30
- paid for Alex's class and got her playing
- got Stephen to the public health nurse for his four month shots
- fed Stephen
- picked up my dress for the wedding this Friday at the seamstress
- got my nails done
- bought Alex a dress for the weddnig this Friday
- dropped off my sunglasses at the optometrist to see if they could replace the lenses
- got back to Enchantaland where I ordered Alex and I food
- fed Stephen
- fed Alex
- fed me
- helped Alex make a cookie and then eat it
- got all of us home for afternoon nap by 1:30
- tidied up
- fed Stephen a few more times (cluster feeds)
- got out of the house for the bridal dinner party
- came home
- fed Stephen a few more times
- got the kids to bed

Tomorrow promises to be even more challenging.

I was supposed to go see my Dad at the hospital between the end of the dinner party and going home, but Stephen apparently was acting up, so I had to rush straight home to feed him :(

I don't think I'm going to be able to see Dad until after this wedding on Friday.

I'm so tired.

*Edit: I read this over and the grammar makes me cringe, but I can't even think clearly enough to figure out how I should reword it.

There are two parts for this post.

First of all, Alex's speech. Alex has been pretty slow for her speech to develop. Initially I was worried about how slow it seemed to be going, but her Godmother (who happens to be a speech language pathologist) assured me that she's within normal ranges, and as well, she seems to be developing in spurts and that her physical development seems to be the main focus right now.

Having said that, in the last couple of weeks, her language has really taken off to the point where I can now almost say that I can understand her more often than not. She's speaking in sentences even if I can't always understand what those sentences are. It's becoming a lot less frustrating for both her and I now that I'm starting to understand her.

Secondly, she has a soother. We missed the golden opportunity to wean her of the soother a few months before the baby was born, and now I think it would be cruel to do it. She won't understand why she can't have a soother and the baby can, so I'm going to wait a bit longer. I'm actually debating on taking it away at all to be honest... I'm an advocate of child-led weaning regarding breast-feeding, so I'm not sure why a soother ought to be any different... but I digress.

Alex is allowed to suck her soother at night times and nap times. During the day, she has to "put the soo-soo to bed". This means the soother goes under her pillow until nap time. Every once in a while, I catch her sneaking a suck in the middle of the day, but for the most part if it's not in sight, she doesn't think about it and doesn't want it.

Today I found her in the living room with the "soo-soo".

"Alex! What's soo-soo doing out of bed? You know it's time for soo-soo's to be in bed! Soo-soo is tired and needs to sleep."

"Mummy, soo-soo's cold. BRRRR!"

I just thought that was so awesome :)

The first part of this past week was a disaster... the trip to the lake made for very poor eating, and I didn't have the energy to try to eat healthy or keep track. I managed to pull myself together by Wednesday and still managed a respectable loss for the week. Next week's goal is to keep track all week!

This week's loss: 0.8 lbs
Total loss: 14.4 lbs

Can any of my less naive and more worldly friends tell me, what is XIX (besides the Roman Numeral for 19)?

Apparently it's involved in upsetting my pseudo cousin, who seems to be going through a rough time right now.

Went to the lake this weekend, and had a great time. Both kids travelled really well... slept most of the 4 hour drive. Stephen basically just hung out in the car. Alex read books when she was awake, and dutifully stayed on cow and train watch.

"There's a cow! There's another cow! There's a train! There's another train!"

At the lake, Alex was a bit of a terror. That's the last time we ever open the cabin with the kids there, unless they're old enough to start helping! Stephen refused to sleep in the play yard, but was quite happy to sleep with me in the bed.

This is the first week I've got both kids at home with me. Today went well. We'll see how the rest of the week goes. Tomorrow we've got plans to hit up the local spray park.

Another gong show of a week. I again didn't keep track. I need to start keeping track.

This week's loss: 1.0 lbs
Total loss: 13.6 lbs

This week was a crazy week. June 22 was my parent's 40th wedding anniversary. I'm writing this on Monday the 23rd, but I'm backdating it to June 21st.

For their anniversary, they normally would have had a huge party, but due to my dad's health being so poor, elected to have a quiet family gathering instead.

For their gift, I made them a family album... asking everyone who normally would have attended the party to write a letter, and then included pictures of everyone. People supplied me with letters and pictures both, and I was overwhelmed with the response. This week I had to scrapbook 86 pages to finish the album in time. I came about 8 pages short of finishing it in time, but I'll finish it in the next day or so.

While I didn't keep track of my food intake (a Weight Watcher no-no), I ate sensibly and if anything I ate less than what I normally would, to try to ensure I was within points.

It looks like I succeeded, because I lost two pounds. Yay!

This week's loss: 2.0 lbs
Total loss: 12.6 lbs

This week felt horrible. I had terrible food cravings the entire week, and I was tired for most of the week. I stopped keeping track of my food intake around Wednesday, which is usually the kiss of death. In addition, I was attacked by a bag of two-bite brownies. I did manage to increase my exercise though, and that apparently made the difference, because I had a huge loss of 2.2 and reached my first 10 lb goal. Yay!

Now if only all of my weight would come off as easily as the first ten pounds did, although hopefully I won't be as miserable as I was this week.

This week's loss: 2.2 lbs
Total loss: 10.6 lbs

I wouldn't mind being salmoned right now. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out themissinghat!

This week I had a few challenges... one of which was another girl's night out Friday night at Red Lobster (our favourite restaurant)! So with the yummy food suggestions from stuporstar, I made some different food choices at the restaurant which led me to an equally successful weigh in this week. The trouble with eating out the night before a weigh in (eating a big meal, usually a larger meal, and usually a late meal) is that you still have a lot of it in your stomach at weigh in time. But I still had a loss!

It would be awesome to have a really good week next week so I could reach my first ten pounds :)

This week's loss: 0.8 lbs
Total loss: 8.4 lbs

This week was particularly hard as Jason's grandma's husband passed away, and there was a lot of family in town. Consequently, there was a lot of food to be eaten. Plus, my sister graduated from medicine on Wednesday, and there was a banquet after-wards. In addition, I went out with the girl's Friday night for Red Lobster and to see the Sex and the City premiere. To be honest by the end of the week, I stopped keeping track, but I still made the attempt to make smart choices.

All in all though, I didn't do as badly as I could have done.


This week's loss: 0.8 lbs
Total loss: 7.6 lbs

Thank you for taking the time to see my daughter today about her relativly mild cough. Thank you also for prescribing some medication for her, as opposed to telling us to "wait and see if it gets worse", thereby making us come back when it's less convenient, more of an emergency, and take up more of our time.

What I'd like to talk to you about, is your amazingly fucktarded decision to prescribe my two year old, 80 ml of yucky medication as a one-time dose. While that may have been the right dose of medication, and while it's possible you may have also taken into account the vast amount that gets spit out, the reality of holding down a two-year old, injecting down her throat a 10 ml syringe full of medicine EIGHT FUCKING TIMES, while she is kicking, screaming and choking... lets just say that was probably one of the more stupid medical decisions I've come across. If you ever try to do something like that again, I'll ensure you have to administer the medicine yourself, just so you can fully appreciate the experience. In case you don't have an appreciation for how much liquid that is, it's more than half a bottle of gripe water.

It took a brief conversation with a hospital pharmacist for me to find out that you could have prescribed her a single tablet we could have crushed up and put in some jam. The drink we had to buy, cost us $30. The tablet that we ended up having to purchase anyways, cost us $12.

Drinkable crap = 2 hours of screaming and huge sticky mess everywhere + $30
Crushable pill = 0 screaming, happy toddler with a yummy snack, a sticky jam mouth's worth of clean up + $12.

Get. A. Fucking. Clue.

For the first time today, I was able to make my little man laugh and giggle repeatedly. Apparently sneezes (even fake ones) are hilarious!

Week Three weigh-in is probably my first realistic weigh-in.

This week's loss: 1.2 lbs
Total loss: 6.8 lbs

Yay!

I talked with my beloved daycare lady today a little more, and asked if her decision was final, or if the offer of more money might persuade her to change her mind. She chuckled a little bit and said no, the decision was made, but if she changed her mind, she'd let us know.

I probed a bit, and I got the following:

1) A strong feeling that she was just exhausted and needed a break. Possibly she took on too many kids this year.
2) A sense that her husband wasn't 100% supportive in her decision to retire.
3) A suspicion that they couldn't financially handle her not working for long, and she was going to have to eventually do something else.
4) Reassurance that she wants to keep in touch through scrapbooking if nothing else.
5) Confirmation that if she does go back to doing daycare, she would most certainly be raising her rates.
6) A sense of possibility that after she gets a much needed break and in addition finishes up some housing reno's that they've been putting off due to it upsetting the daycare, she might re-open.

Having said that, my family and friends have been quick to point out that this might not be a bad thing, because as much as we loved her, her situation wasn't necessarily ideal for our situation. Consider the following:

1) She catered to parents of teachers - daycare was open on days when school was in session and closed when school was out. This left me without daycare for the entire summer.
2) She liked to have the kids picked up at 4:30. While this was great for teachers, not so great for the 9-5 crowd. As it was, Jason and I had to request to have our hours adjusted to 8-4 to accomodate this. Let it be noted that I am not a morning person.
3) Normally a daycare that keeps school hours also tends to not be closed during school days unless it's for illness or special appointment, but in her case, an awful lot of special family events tended to happen in between school holidays. Again, this wasn't a huge hardship for us as we don't have kids in school anyway. If we did, this could be really difficult to deal with. Note that she didn't charge us for days that our children were not in her care.

Essentially what this means is that even though she was beyond awesome as a person and the environment was perfect, and we would and will pay more for her to continue to care for our children while we work, there will also be a little less stress in finding someone who has hours more consistant with ours. Because I'm on mat leave, we have the time to be a bit picky.

So. I'm not quite as devastated as last night... partially because I have a sneaking suspicion she might just call me in November asking if we'd still like her to babysit in the new year, and partially because I'm seeing things more clearly. Either way though, I'm still very very sad, although relieved that she wants to keep in touch. She has been there for my family when my own family let me down, and I don't want to let someone like that out of my life.

I'm so upset. Our beloved daycare lady has told us that at the end of June, she will be retiring. This means Alex won't be going back to her place in the fall, and I'll have to find another option for both kids.

This makes me so unbelievably sad... we just loved her. She had exactly the right environment I wanted for my children, and she's so kind and nurturing and loving... this is going to be a huge blow to the family. I honestly considered her to be a part of our extended family.

Alex is young enough that she'll probably adjust just fine, but my heart has just sunk to new levels of low. I'm not looking forward to trying to find her replacement, because I honestly don't think she can be replaced.

I'm sitting here at my computer desk (which I can't actually see), trying to find the motivation to clean it up. I need some energy right now so badly...