Too much

There is too much to post on right now, so I'm picking one little thing, because it's 11:57pm, and I should have been in bed 2 hours ago.

A couple weeks ago I got together with some of my girlfriends from highschool and we had a picnic, all oldschool on blankets under trees with sandwiches, strawberry shortcake and lemonade. It was delish, the babies were beautiful, fun and good when they weren't cranky, and I had a ball.

I love getting together with these ladies. We've all kind of gone our own seperate ways, but it is such fun when our worlds are brought back together once more for an afternoon, especially when our numbers are increasing thanks to littles, and when the get-togethers are made all the more joyous with pregnancy announcements (not me, I promise.)

That being said, most of the pictures I took were of the babies, so I'm just going to post a few of the good ones here.

"And who might you be??"

Loving the face Anne is making

Anne and her beautiful daughter, Eden.

Bashful Eden, who like to stare at my big camera, but was otherwise generally content to not smile.

Sweet girl.

Couldn't get enough of her!

And neither could Elijah, apparently! I LOVE this above photo...it's my background right now.

Ohhh how that smile unhinges me!

I had a great time, and part of me wishes that I had the camera out more, but then, I was busy eating, taking care of Eli, and spending time relaxing. So oh well.

Coming up soon: posts on Elijah's MRI, home renovations, and general updates.

But first, before I finish, I have to take note of the date. Elijah is officially (well, I guess now that it's after midnight, it's not so officially...) 6 months old. I have a 6-month old. That's not sounding so young anymore! He's getting bigger and bigger. He's rolling deliberately and frequently. He loves standing. He laughs at the silliest things, and when he's in his carseat and happy he scrunches up his shoulders so that all his neck fat goes to his face, and then, he beams. Like, with his whole soul, he just GLOWS. Cutest. Thing. Ever. I need to capture it on camera!

And now, for bed. I wouldn't be going to bed so late if Matt wasn't still up playing Starcraft 2, which came out today. I have one hooked husband. 

And I keep finding more to say. Good night!

Overloaded

Today is a pretty emotional day for me. There are so many good things going on in our life together right now, but they come at a price.

My day started out with Elijah waking up at 6am, not wanting to feed, just wanting to be up. It's been his thing lately, to get up anywhere between 5:30 and 7am, be up for an hour or so, feed, and then go back to bed for another hour or two. Around here, we don't have a solid schedule in terms of times, we just do the same general thing with a leeway of about 2 hours.

So I got Eli up, opened up my computer, and signed in to my email to respond to the 9 emails from Kijiji buyers that I had had over the course of Sunday. We're selling a bunch of stuff on Kijiji (or what feels like a bunch of stuff to me.)

Why are we selling stuff on Kijiji?

Because we're moving.

I know! Completely out of left field, right? If I haven't told you yet, it's because it's too new to me still to have the energy to call people and have long exhaustive conversations about it, hence the blog post.

So we've decided to move. Right now we're working on emptying our house of the stuff we don't plan on taking with us, which is a lot because at the moment we're in a house of 2200 sq. ft. total (including basement levels) and we'll be moving to an apartment of about 800-900 sq.ft., which means 1300 sq. ft. of downsizing. We'll have 1 living room instead of 3, 2 bedrooms instead of 3, and a desk rather than two home office stations. When I put it like that it sounds kind of sad, but it actually feels good to pare down and get rid of stuff we barely use, and keep what we want.

The real sad part is that we'll have one dog instead of one dog and one cat.

Yes, we're giving Merry away (cue tears and sad music.)

This was a hard decision to make, and my heart feels very heavy right now. At first we talked about moving into an apartment so small that we would have no choice but to give her away. Now we're moving into a bigger apartment (well, that's our plan anyway) but we've decided to keep with giving Merry away. There are a number of reasons, but the big ones are:

1) I don't feel it would be fair to ALL of us to be in a small apartment with 2 adults, a baby, a dog and a cat. It'd just be too crammed.

2) Where on earth would be put a litter box in such a small apartment?

It's hard though, because I love my cat oh so much.

This morning, to ease the parting blow, I called a pet store to see if they were open before 9 so I could go and get her some toys to go with her to her new home. They weren't open yet, but the nice man said to come by anyway because he was already there, so I hopped in the car and bought her some toy balls and a kitty kong that she loves playing with.

Today is just plain sad! I listed the ad for her on Thursday, figuring it'd take a while to find a home for her given how many other adult cats were listed on Kijiji, but we had a response by Saturday and I feel shocked with how quick everything has been! Merry will be gone today or tomorrow, our couch and chair from the living room is gone, and our furniture from the basement is gone too (the beige stuff.) There's nowhere to sit in the living room or Matt's office, and the rec room is already looking sparse, as the office chair is gone from that desk. Soon the desk will be gone too, and we have people coming by today or tomorrow for the treadmill, patio furniture, white glider chair, and an old bike.

Weird weird weird weird!!

We have someone downstairs at this very moment tearing down wallpaper in our ugly bathroom, and someone coming by later to tear out the toilet and vanity. Work on that bathroom will continue to move forwards over the course if the next couple weeks, and we have someone coming by this week to start work on replacing our living room floors with laminate. We have a busy few weeks ahead of us, but if we're diligent we just might have our house listed in 2-3 weeks! What can I say? We're people of action. When we want to be!

Life feels a little confusing right now, and my mind feels a little overloaded by all of our recent decisions. I have more to post about - general stuff going on in our lives, but I just don't have the energy at this moment to type it all out! Hopefully I'll have another blog post up by the end of the week, so keep checking in for a more normal, day-to-day post!

I needed that

Today has been one of those days. The kind of day where I wake up with my period, Matt is rushing out the door for work, I don't have energy to make breakfast, Elijah is fussing, then crying, then squealing/screaming and nothing (let me repeat, nothing) will make him happy, and I'm sitting on the floor, staring off into space while dangling a toy in a screaming baby's face. Then I glance at the clock, and it's 9:10am. So much more time to go before it's even LUNCH. Calling a friend to vent, calling Matt to cry, eating chocolate ice cream at 10am (did I mention I'm glad I'm eating chocolate again?) and staring around at the messy messy house, determined to not clean it, even though it'll make me feel better.

Don't worry, my day didn't turn out so poorly as it started, but it was a bit of a doozy. I resolved to get something for myself done, so I bunkered down and sewed Matt's new apron that I was putting together for him. Yes, it was an apron for Matt, because he does all the cooking, and on Sundays he's wearing a white dress-shirt that he doesn't like getting dirty, so for 5 years he's worn my "Pampered Bride" one, and I thought it was time for a manlier apron. It has brown and black stripes and I'm oh so proud.

But anyway, my day. It was a bad day for Elijah. He was seldom happy the entire day, though he did take a number of naps. Matt stayed home from work from 3pm on to help out (SO grateful) but Eli even screamed like a banshee for Matt. It was tough. Then this evening we went to the beach and he was a little doll, so that made up for it a lot. Until he started screaming again! Except it didn't feel so bad when it wasn't non-stop. I can take it in small chunks!

I know I'm rambling now. I'd say I'm sorry, but it'd be a lie. It's my blog! I can ramble.

So, all in all, it was an okay day. The tubing this evening was fun (though painful at times) and the lake was beautiful and the perfect temperature. We had McDonalds for dinner which was just what I wanted (gross, huh? But I think I'm low on salt right now because all I've been wanting are McDonalds fries) and then we headed home, Elijah back to screaming his little head off, bless his heart.

He's in bed now, and I'm thinking that he's going to be in the crib starting tomorrow (but don't tell Matt, just in case I change my mind. Don't want him getting his hopes up.)

I feel pooped though. There were little rays of beautiful light today, but there were so many rough spots too, where I feel like I can't handle it alone.

Then, I went to lds.org and saw this video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbYLKVgwztY&hl=en_GB&fs=1]

And all I can say (through the tears and near-sobbing) is, "I needed that."

A day of firsts and pics of Eli

So many firsts to write about, so little time! I guess that's what happens when I don't post much more than once or twice a week.

Yesterday was a big day for Elijah, or at least it felt that it was. It was his first day in size 3 diapers for one thing, although that is admittedly not terribly exciting. A little sad I suppose, he's growing so fast, but I'm excited for every milestone, and there is much to look forward to as he grows older.

Another first from yesterday involved Elijah's first swim. He took it pretty well, and didn't even cry, although he did look a little startled and confused by everything that was going on. Here is a cute picture of him with Matt:

and Elijah being dried off in his one-fish-two-fish towel (I think his favourite part of the evening):

And the last big first from yesterday was Elijah's first time eating solids! Well, sort of solids. He had some rice cereal but it was very watered-down by breast milk. In a few days we'll try mixing it with formula instead, but as he hasn't had any formula yet either, we thought it wise to not try two new things at once.

Here are a few pictures of Elijah's first spoon-fed experience:

He took a little bit of coaxing, but after a few attempts he figured out that he needed to open wide for the spoon.

Enjoying his food!

Feeding him was a little difficult as he kept leaning forwards to gnaw on the edge of the bumbo and also to grab his feet, like so:

A

A new habit of his.

So happy grabbing his feet.

Today Elijah grabbed his feet and stuck his toes right in his mouth, and proceeded to chomp on them, it was the cutest thing! Now whenever he is on his back his feet are straight in the air and he is making swipes at his little toes. Suffice it to say we believe he has discovered his feet. Another first! Oh, AND today he rolled from back to front for the first time. What an over-achiever!

And just because he is so adorable, here are some more photos of him:

A brief smile between some major fussing at mum and dad's place. We were selfishly staying a little late, trying to play a game with Rob, Kira, Aaron and Rachelle. I think we're going to have to start being responsible parents quite soon... 

A pretty blurry photo, but it looks like Elijah is pointing at Matt and laughing!

Smiling between some more fusses at Swiss Chalet on Canada Day. He was such a trooper though, and was good for us all day.

In between all of our craziness we had our birthdays (which, I suppose, contributed to some of the craziness!) and spent some good quality time together. I'd go into it more right now, but I'm just too tired. I think there are even a bunch of things that I was going to write about Eli and other things not related to our birthdays, but they've all slipped my mind. Oh, one was how my dental work is done (**shakes hands in a silent cheer**) and another is how I've had Backyardigan songs going through my head for days. Ummm...nope, that's all I've got. Not too exciting, but we're happy and life is good. Matt's 29 now and I'm 26, and one of my favourite past-times right now is imagining all of the possibilities that 26 will bring for me. I hope it's a wonderful year, but to be honest, it's going to kinda hard to beat 25, because 25 was just that beautiful.

Here's to life.