Our neighbour is doing some construction, and there is an assortment of large golden-coloured construction equipment down there doing their business. She knows the Irish word for excavator quite well, and thinks it is fun to say apparently. The other day while playing alone in her room I heard her repeating over and over, "tochaltoir... tochaltoir... tochaltoir... tochaltoir.."
This afternoon Anna looked out the window and said,
"Hey, yook Mommy! See dat Innovator??? It's digging!!!"
To which I replied, "You mean EXcavator?? "
"YA, ya... EXcavator..."
---------------------------------------------
Then I was telling her that she would be a big sister next week, that she would have either a brother or sister, but that there would be a new baby anyway. TO which she replied,
"Ooh! Will it be a pink one??? I want a pink one."
Thursday, May 24, 2007
3 days over news
I was informed yesterday that the medical community is considering it basically impossible for me to deliver the baby, so I am now scheduled for a c-section on Tuesday. That's when they could pencil me in. It's like trying to get a haircut appointment. Weird.
Apparently my pelvis just doesn't cut it. And the "good birthing hips" of which I boasted possessing all through high school don't count for anything either. Oh well.
So here I am. Hoping now to NOT go into labor and make it until Tuesday eventless.
Thanks for prayers and concern. I will let you know as soon as I can what they find next week... hehehe
Apparently my pelvis just doesn't cut it. And the "good birthing hips" of which I boasted possessing all through high school don't count for anything either. Oh well.
So here I am. Hoping now to NOT go into labor and make it until Tuesday eventless.
Thanks for prayers and concern. I will let you know as soon as I can what they find next week... hehehe
Sunday, May 20, 2007
the beached whale and other foibles
Some humour from this interesting time of life.
I'm more like a turtle on it's back, really. But this condition goes back a ways. In high school one time, a friend and I compared the relative difference in our body shapes. We both laid on the floor on our backs, and I could easily raise and lower my legs but had difficulty sitting my torso straight up, while her torso would almost automatically raise when she tried to lift her legs. Interesting.
I'm still like that, it's just worse. I can get out of bed on my own, but Chris' assistance is much appreciated. I'm sure the upswing heave-ho action of my legs trying to create some counterforce and get that ol' torso vertical must be humourous to watch. But I have no audience generally. Lucky for me.
Then I would like to compose a wee letter of thanks to whomever is responsible (or not responsible, as the case may be) for maintaining things in the women's washroom at my church.
The locks don't work, on any of the doors, as far as I know. Now, combine the following conditions and it just isn't pretty.
1) I am quite short. Thus, so are my legs.
2) The stall doors to not lock.
3) Whatever unbalanced angle the doors are hanging at, causes them to naturally swing open inwards.
So this leaves me, who frequents washrooms with some, well, frequency these days, stretching my little leg, pointing my little toes as far as they will go (while trying to remain in appropriate proximity to the loo itself) to hold the door at least mostly closed while I occupy the space. What can I say, but that it is nearly impossible, and at the very least, far from comfortable. But hey.
Then there were two sitcom-ready moments of maternity shame that I will here bare in my seeming disregard for my own self-image or dignity.
The first was a month-ish ago, after church. I was driving home alone, and had stopped to pick up a couple groceries. Well, there was a box of glazed donuts on the clearance rack of the bakery, which I snatched right up, for Chris, of course. Well, the salivation began shortly thereafter as "visions of sugar plums (and donuts) danced in my head, " while I was walking around the other aisles of the store.
What a horrid display I made of myself, loading the bags of groceries into the trunk, and tearing savagely into the box of donuts, and inhaling one while standing in the parking lot just outside the open trunk of my car. Had I not eaten in a week? I mean really.
I licked my fingers as clean as I could as I delivered the cart to the little cart corrall and walked back to my car pretending that there was no one sitting in their cars waiting for anyone inside to return and watching my little show. Lovely. Not to mention, impressive.
Then there was the other day... *sigh* this was truly shameful as well. I was like an alcoholic. But with sugar. I made these cookie/bark/brittle things that are truly sinful and delicious, very rich and pure cryptonite for me. I hid from Anna, because of course, that much sugar is no good for her!!! And I ate and I ate and I ate as gluttonously as I can actually EVER recall eating, literally, until I made myself sick. I don't know what came over me. I didn't lose anyting, but boy, was my stomach ever upset. Yowzers. And I felt drained and heavy and nauseous the whole rest of the day. Absolutely pitiful.
The bright side is that I have had basically NO desire for sugar since then. At all. I'll just eat some plain cauliflower, ok? Thanks. And water. LOTS of water. Please.
I'm more like a turtle on it's back, really. But this condition goes back a ways. In high school one time, a friend and I compared the relative difference in our body shapes. We both laid on the floor on our backs, and I could easily raise and lower my legs but had difficulty sitting my torso straight up, while her torso would almost automatically raise when she tried to lift her legs. Interesting.
I'm still like that, it's just worse. I can get out of bed on my own, but Chris' assistance is much appreciated. I'm sure the upswing heave-ho action of my legs trying to create some counterforce and get that ol' torso vertical must be humourous to watch. But I have no audience generally. Lucky for me.
Then I would like to compose a wee letter of thanks to whomever is responsible (or not responsible, as the case may be) for maintaining things in the women's washroom at my church.
The locks don't work, on any of the doors, as far as I know. Now, combine the following conditions and it just isn't pretty.
1) I am quite short. Thus, so are my legs.
2) The stall doors to not lock.
3) Whatever unbalanced angle the doors are hanging at, causes them to naturally swing open inwards.
So this leaves me, who frequents washrooms with some, well, frequency these days, stretching my little leg, pointing my little toes as far as they will go (while trying to remain in appropriate proximity to the loo itself) to hold the door at least mostly closed while I occupy the space. What can I say, but that it is nearly impossible, and at the very least, far from comfortable. But hey.
Then there were two sitcom-ready moments of maternity shame that I will here bare in my seeming disregard for my own self-image or dignity.
The first was a month-ish ago, after church. I was driving home alone, and had stopped to pick up a couple groceries. Well, there was a box of glazed donuts on the clearance rack of the bakery, which I snatched right up, for Chris, of course. Well, the salivation began shortly thereafter as "visions of sugar plums (and donuts) danced in my head, " while I was walking around the other aisles of the store.
What a horrid display I made of myself, loading the bags of groceries into the trunk, and tearing savagely into the box of donuts, and inhaling one while standing in the parking lot just outside the open trunk of my car. Had I not eaten in a week? I mean really.
I licked my fingers as clean as I could as I delivered the cart to the little cart corrall and walked back to my car pretending that there was no one sitting in their cars waiting for anyone inside to return and watching my little show. Lovely. Not to mention, impressive.
Then there was the other day... *sigh* this was truly shameful as well. I was like an alcoholic. But with sugar. I made these cookie/bark/brittle things that are truly sinful and delicious, very rich and pure cryptonite for me. I hid from Anna, because of course, that much sugar is no good for her!!! And I ate and I ate and I ate as gluttonously as I can actually EVER recall eating, literally, until I made myself sick. I don't know what came over me. I didn't lose anyting, but boy, was my stomach ever upset. Yowzers. And I felt drained and heavy and nauseous the whole rest of the day. Absolutely pitiful.
The bright side is that I have had basically NO desire for sugar since then. At all. I'll just eat some plain cauliflower, ok? Thanks. And water. LOTS of water. Please.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
New blog
Heya.
I started a blog in Irish. Just wanted to. Hopefully I can get more practice and use more vocabulary than I get to with Anna. Hopefully it will help keep me sharper and thinking Irish more often, so that I can be more faithful using it with her and the baby-to-be. Meh, who knows, but I am making an effort.
This is the url, if anyone here happens to be an Irish speaker (stranger things have happened) or if you want to look at it just to see how weird written Irish looks. : )
http://misemamai.blogspot.com/
If I was tricky enough I would just add the link on the side of the page here, but I'm not that tricky. Leave me to the bread making and fiddle playing, thank you. Not that I don't wish I could be that tricky, I'm just not.
Gaeilge go deo!
I started a blog in Irish. Just wanted to. Hopefully I can get more practice and use more vocabulary than I get to with Anna. Hopefully it will help keep me sharper and thinking Irish more often, so that I can be more faithful using it with her and the baby-to-be. Meh, who knows, but I am making an effort.
This is the url, if anyone here happens to be an Irish speaker (stranger things have happened) or if you want to look at it just to see how weird written Irish looks. : )
http://misemamai.blogspot.com/
If I was tricky enough I would just add the link on the side of the page here, but I'm not that tricky. Leave me to the bread making and fiddle playing, thank you. Not that I don't wish I could be that tricky, I'm just not.
Gaeilge go deo!
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Precious Moments
Anna has become fascinated with 'the belly' and the baby in it. Sometimes she will just be looking at it and say, "Wow! it is so HUGE!" Her new hobby is pulling up my shirt and laying her head and hands on the belly and waiting for the baby to kick her. Then she jumps back and looks at me with big eyes and a smile to match and says, "Did you feel dat one???? Da baby kicked me!" And her patience for this routine has really grown. Earlier on she couldn't wait the couple moments it took to feel a kick or a roll. Now she will sit there just about as long as you will let her, enjoying as many as she can. I'm loving it!
The other night baby and I had a little 'moment'. We bonded. It gets quite active in the warmth of the tub, and lying there, it did this straight-leg knee-lock thing, and the bum was stuck out one side, quite pronounced, and a foot was pushing out the opposite side. Normally, when pressure is applied to a protrusion, it will retract fairly readily. But it didn't this time. It let me sit there and rub its little foot for the longest time!!! I couldn't believe it. I just rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, and it kept it stuck out as far as it could, almost as if enjoying it. I know I was. Just a sweet little moment.
I am thinking that it is a girl now, as of the last weekish or so. With no certainty of course, but just kinda thinking. And Anna has changed her tune! She had held, without wavering even once, that it was definitely a boy from the first mention of it until just a couple days ago, now she keeps saying it is a girl. So who knows. We will all know in a couple days or weeks, now won't we! The names she has selected for it have been quite... interesting. First was Daniel, then Zorret, the Fissy, then Soupy. Soupy is everybody's made-up silly name right now, however, not just the baby.
I finally settled on a paint colour. Pittsburgh Paint 311-4, Cress Green, if anyone is that very interested. Chris brought it home last night and I dove right in cutting in around window and doors within the hour. I simply could NOT wait to get some ON the wall, and see how it was going to look. I should have taken a before picture. I will have to find an old one of our very dark red room. This light green just almost glows compared to the darkness of the red.
Cress Green happens to be from the Scottish Highlands collection, and I swear that is a coincidence, as is our anniversary on St. Pat's. No one will believe I'm not the poser I appear to be. But those who are closest to me know full well that the whole rose-coloured-glasses thing on all things celtic has long since faded. I no longer get goosebumps crossing the Causeway to Cape Breton, for example, or talking to fill-in-the-blank famous celtic musician. They are just places and people: loved by God, but equal, and full of both and good and bad.
Hawaii or New Zealand, on the other hand... I think my glasses are pretty rosey about that right now... or maybe the winter is just getting long. What was that I said about 63 degrees? Ya, that was just that one day. It was great and all... but I've had the heaters on again with regualrity since then.
There's all the blather I can muster for today. I will likely keep you posted on any new humans or even much less exciting things, like sweeping my floor. Mmm... sweeping...
The other night baby and I had a little 'moment'. We bonded. It gets quite active in the warmth of the tub, and lying there, it did this straight-leg knee-lock thing, and the bum was stuck out one side, quite pronounced, and a foot was pushing out the opposite side. Normally, when pressure is applied to a protrusion, it will retract fairly readily. But it didn't this time. It let me sit there and rub its little foot for the longest time!!! I couldn't believe it. I just rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, and it kept it stuck out as far as it could, almost as if enjoying it. I know I was. Just a sweet little moment.
I am thinking that it is a girl now, as of the last weekish or so. With no certainty of course, but just kinda thinking. And Anna has changed her tune! She had held, without wavering even once, that it was definitely a boy from the first mention of it until just a couple days ago, now she keeps saying it is a girl. So who knows. We will all know in a couple days or weeks, now won't we! The names she has selected for it have been quite... interesting. First was Daniel, then Zorret, the Fissy, then Soupy. Soupy is everybody's made-up silly name right now, however, not just the baby.
I finally settled on a paint colour. Pittsburgh Paint 311-4, Cress Green, if anyone is that very interested. Chris brought it home last night and I dove right in cutting in around window and doors within the hour. I simply could NOT wait to get some ON the wall, and see how it was going to look. I should have taken a before picture. I will have to find an old one of our very dark red room. This light green just almost glows compared to the darkness of the red.
Cress Green happens to be from the Scottish Highlands collection, and I swear that is a coincidence, as is our anniversary on St. Pat's. No one will believe I'm not the poser I appear to be. But those who are closest to me know full well that the whole rose-coloured-glasses thing on all things celtic has long since faded. I no longer get goosebumps crossing the Causeway to Cape Breton, for example, or talking to fill-in-the-blank famous celtic musician. They are just places and people: loved by God, but equal, and full of both and good and bad.
Hawaii or New Zealand, on the other hand... I think my glasses are pretty rosey about that right now... or maybe the winter is just getting long. What was that I said about 63 degrees? Ya, that was just that one day. It was great and all... but I've had the heaters on again with regualrity since then.
There's all the blather I can muster for today. I will likely keep you posted on any new humans or even much less exciting things, like sweeping my floor. Mmm... sweeping...
Thursday, May 03, 2007
The Envy of the Block
It's us. We are so cool. We have something that the others don't have, and wouldn't they love to have it, but they don't...
I suppose, however, that 'block' is a generous term for us here. There is a dirt road, and there are a couple other houses on it. I guess those are the ones to whom I am referring still, but even beyond in the community, covetousness is a-brewin'.
Do you want to know what it is, that so sets us apart, that makes us so superior? It has always been a symbol of the upper class, the bourgeois, the "happenin' " ones. Young people flock to it, matches are made around it, a symbol of romance and sophistication.
A piano accordian. Oh yes. No joke. We are now the proud owners of an accordian. Chris has a good friend named Bernie with whom he plays many's the card game and they help each other with outdoor chores.
So the story goes, one fateful day Chris was over in Bernie's shop, and he noticed it there, a diamond in the rough, covered in years of neglect and dust. He inquired and Bernie offered, and now it is ours.
Now begins the "In Praise of Chris" section. He amazes me. He had never held an accordian in his life before this one. Yet he had the confidence and instinct with which to totally disassemble and repair this instrument with no direction or instruction of any kind. I couldn't believe it. He first cleaned it, then took it TOTALLY apart, and began work. All the keys were at different levels, and he figured out the problem, levelled them all, one by one. It wheezed and leaked air: not a problem for Engineering brain Chris. He sourced the leaks and repaired them, sealed degraded seams, repaired damaged reeds, sculpted missing and broken parts, you name it. Unreal. I was sitting there with my jaw on the floor. He just has the instinct for "how stuff works", and can look at something new, figure out the mechanics of it, and fix something he has no knowledge of otherwise. That is a gift. I wouldn't begin to have the first clue towards anything he did those few evenings he spent fixing this old fella up. Remarkable. Now it can be nicely played (not by me, mind you) and not do any weird things.
What a man. He can build pretty much anything too. Mechanical (and computer, for that matter) problem solving is something is just in him. Nota Bene. 'At's ma boy.
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