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...

I don't know what it is about the vaseline, but she's completely obsessed with it!

Today I was hanging out with Stephen in the family room just before we were supposed to leave to go to my parents, and all of a sudden I noticed it was really quiet. I went to find Alex, and there she was in the nursery - dipping her hand in the jar of vaseline, and "washing her hair" with it.

Needless to say the trip got postponed for an hour while we gave her a shower.

Damn hot. It's so hot I'd like to chop all my hair off.

Thank goodness the kids don't mind the heat.

They're both doing really well, although Alex has had a mild virus with a nasty cough, but it's all good.

I've decided to join Weight Watchers to get the baby-weight off... keep the fingers crossed, hopefully I can lose it all relatively quickly :)

I finally got around to updating the look of my site and livejournal.

In addition, I updated my links, made sure they all work, and yeah... I'm thinking it looks kinda nice :)

I'll miss flexible squares, but I don't know enough CSS to style it further the way I'd like.

	First Picture! At this point, he's fresh out of the womb, and neonatal were just looking over him.
	First picture with Mom and Dad! Here we are behind the "sterile" curtain. The doctors are just finishing sewing me up on the other side. The anaesthesiologist took this shot. We joked that he was part-time anaesthesiologist, and part-time photographer.
	Unwrapped Of course it's hard to see what they look like all bundled up, so here he is unwrapped. The clip on his umbilical cord is actually alarmed. If he (with the clip) leaves the ward, alarms go off to warn the staff that someone is taking a baby.
	Stephen with Dad Here he is with Jason. He and Jason bonded almost immediately. It was interesting that right away, there were two voices he responded to - mine and Jason's. Obviously he'd heard them both lots in the womb :)
	Too cute for words! Here's a close-up of the little guy :) At this point, I couldn't see resemblance to either Jason, or to myself, but I really thought he looked an awful lot like Alexandra!
	Me and Dad He is absolutely mesmorized by Jason. You can really see it in this picture!
	Stephen and Mom Here we are, just the two of us. At this point I was thoroughly exhausted, but happy.
	Stephen, Alexandra and Mom We tried hard to get a picture of the four of us, but Alex just wouldn't sit still. This was the best we could do. You can really see how she's grown! March 13, 2008

Stephen Michael was born on March 12, 2008, at 8:43am.

Shar was a scheduled C-section for 10am, but actually went into labour at 5:20am. They graciously bumped up the time of her section to 8am.

Stephen was 8lbs 13oz and 21" long. No complications.

So far everyone is doing fine and pictures to follow within the next week or so.

J

Alrighty people, here it is... it's almost that time again. We already know it's a boy, so...

Up for guessing:

- Baby's actual date of birth
- Baby's weight
- Baby's length
- Circumferance of stomach just prior to birth and prior to water breaking (in inches)
- Number of hours of labour
- Vaginal delivery or C-section (Vaginal delivery is planned, but last one was an emergency C-section.)

The facts:
My calculated due date is March 14th. The fundus measurements have been either exactly bang on, or measuring one week earlier.

Votes close on Thursday morning, March 06th!

I can't believe my little girl is two years old today... it seems unbelievable. She's still a baby to me, and I suspect she always will be.

I have never been so happy as I have been since she has become a part of my life.

Alexandra, I hope you will continue to fill our lives with joy and happiness, and that we won't be disappointments to you as parents. We love you so very much, and we want to give you the world.

We will be with you forever and always.