Flower Pots and Hiding Spots

This weekend I bought a few new flower pots. I thought they were for my plants but as it turns out they are the best place for a 12 month old to hide! She's been climbing in and out of them at every chance she gets. I almost hate to fill them with soil and the shrubs I had intended them for.

Day One

Day Two

She also likes to put her orange ball in the flower pot.

Maybe that's how basket ball was invented?

Should I ask James Naismith?

My pics a re little blurry - they are taken on my iPhone 3GS - and the kid is always mooooving!

Peonies

Memory Lane

I heart peonies as much as the ants do!

I bought these peonies yesterday at the Washington Farmer's Market. I'm so happy the farmer's market is up and running again! Finley and I strolled uptown to the peruse the wares and came home with home made BBQ sauce, fresh local grown strawberries, a dozen fresh eggs and this bouquet of Peonies.

The side of the house of the home I grew up in, was lined with great big Peonies bushes. They were planted there by my mother when she and dad bought the house. The Peonies plants were from her father's garden in her childhood home. We had pink and white ones but the pink were always my favorite.

At the end of the school year my mom and I would go out to the side of the house early in the morning to cut some peonies so I could take them to my teacher. The grass was cold and dewy wet, mom was usually in her nightie, bathrobe and sandals. She showed me how to cut the peonies stems on an angle just below the leaves. "They drink up the water better if cut on an angle." she told me. She would run the heads of the Peonies under the garden hose to get the ants off. "The ants help the flowers open," she told me. I just thought she didn't want me to carry the ants to school with me. Carefully she wrapped the ends of the stems in wet paper towels and covered them with a plastic bag held secure with an elastic. "It's to keep the flowers from wilting until you get them to school,"she told me.

I loved presenting the peonies to my teacher. I felt special all day. I loved seeing them there on the desk knowing they had come from my mom's garden, my mom's ants had helped them open, my mom's thoughtfulness had landed them on the teachers desk.

I bought a bunch of Peonies and thought about all these things on my short walk home pushing my daughter in her stroller. One day I will tell her about the ants on the Peonies buds and hopefully she will also know the unexpected joy of bringing such beautiful flowers to her teacher.

Happy Earth Day!

A small scene from my backyard.

Get outside and enjoy the day - even for a few minutes!

Weaning

Finley and I have had a good run at breast feeding. She took to the breast and never looked back! We always did breast feeding on demand. She refused bottles, pacifiers and took a very long time to try a sippy cup. She is a boobies addict.

I have had mixed emotions about the whole breast feeding thing. Most of the time I love it. The bond we share, the snuggle time, the fact that her food is portable and always stored at the right temperature is a bonus! Our nights were much less disruptive, I wasn't up mixing formula, we rarely became fully awake and she never cried during the night. The flip side to this is the high needs times. When she is teething and wants to attach herself for hours drives me crazy not to mention it's beyond annoying and doesn't feel awesome! All I can hear is the nurse in the hospital telling me, "Don't let her use you as a pacifier!" Um, yeah - I failed at that. I am Fin's pacifier.

Finley has been weaning herself. We had gotten down to only one feed between 4-6pm and then I would nurse her down to sleep at night and then nurse her at her usual 5am feed. It got to the point where I stopped offering her the boobies and only when she signed milk at me while scaling my legs to get near the boobies did I feed her. Usually it was a comfort reason - not- hunger. Then that subsided too, so, I was just nursing her to sleep...Our pediatrician said "cold turkey - just stop!" I decided I'm not taking that advice. It's called weaning for a reason. Besides, I don't want to become engorged and get a breast infection or something nasty! Gradual works.

Then Fin began to latch every stinking half hour ALL NIGHT LONG. Teething again. I was climbing out of my skin. It was driving me crazy and I was resenting the fact that I was not getting any sleep. Truthfully I don't think Finley was either. She was cranky and whiny during the day until after her morning nap. I didn't want her to feel my resentment and then there was the biting when the supply ran dry. She was getting frustrated and biting me. Yeah - that's awesome! Not so much.

Last week we began to night wean. I warmed organic cow's milk put it in a sippy cup and we snuggled in the big chair. The first night she drank all the milk wiggled a little and fell asleep right there in my arms. I was so amazed at how easily she had done this and then I began to cry. I had a great big sobbing cry. My baby is a big girl now. We're moving into new phases this is a great new step kind of cry.

Finley woke a number of times in the night throwing a tantrum when the boobies were not offered. I gave her the cup of milk. She refused it then gradually she would take it and fall straight back to sleep. This went on for several nights and then in the last two nights she had taken her milk at bed time. Rolled around in bed and then fell asleep all by herself. I'm right beside her, she's not alone, but she is self soothing and sleeping. Last night she only woke up twice and I was slow to offer the cup of milk. She settled herself and went back to sleep sans milk. The only feeding she took was at 5am and I'm certain she was very thirsty. Then she settled again.

The nice thing for me has been the early evening. Instead of running upstairs to resettle her with nursing every time she wakes up which was every hour, she now whimpers and settles herself. I get to relax and have some me time. It's been a year since I've had any!!! I know I'm preaching to the choir.

This is going really well, although I dare not say it aloud. Next step will be getting her to take her morning nap without me.... She falls asleep in my arms or in the Ergo Carrier but wakes the second I put her down. Arrrgggghhhh!

One step at a time.

Advice? What worked for you?

Dad's Experiments

My hubs Steve likes to perform experiments...ask my seester Sue. Her son Aaron is deaf. Sue and I came into the room one time to see Steve twirling Aaron around and around in circles. Aaron was grinning from ear to ear. "What are you doing?" we ask Steve. "Aaron is deaf - if he truly has no middle ear then he won't get dizzy. I want to prove this theory wrong. I think he will get dizzy!" Steve twirled Aaron around some more and then set him down and took a few steps back and asked Aaron to walk to him. Aaron weaved his way toward Uncle Steve hoping to get some more twirling. "Aha! He's dizzy!" Steve exclaimed. Sue and I looked at each other in awe. This little experiment really did debunk the doctor's reports. This is just one example of Steve and his experiments....

Here is another:

Steve is an ED nurse - he always claims kids in car seats are rarely injured.

"Look how secure she is- she didn't even move!" he says.

Fin is squealing with delight!

"See she's totally fine in there," Steve tells me.

All this came about after we had to adjust the straps in the car seat as Finley has grown.

Steve & Fin after the experiment - she's happy and ready for more Daddy time.

What's next?

Wordless Wednesday - Left Overs

Finley & Cecil HELP THEMSELVES to lasagna.

Um, Yeah. You've been caught in the act! On video too.

The Log Farm & Nature Walk in Ottawa

The Log Farm

This is the Log Farm in Ottawa (Nepean). It stands rustic and beautiful amongst the fields in between Cedarview Road and the 416. It's an awesome little farm.

The horse, sheep, pot bellied pig, goat and chickens roam the property and are well socialized. A little girl came running out of the hen houses calling her daddy to come see what she had. She was super delighted to find a newly laid egg. "It's still warm," she says to me, holding it out for me to touch. The egg and our breakfast were the ONLY WARM things out on the farm that day - man it was cold! Minus 8 degree Celsius. FREEEEEEEZING!

Finley and her cousin Aaron looking at the Sheep.

The Lone Star catered a pancake breakfast with fresh maple syrup from the Log Farm Sugar Bush. Juice, coffee, hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, sausages, and all the pancakes you could eat for $6.00 per person. We wanted to get out to the sugar bush but the field road out there was a bog and we were not equipped with hip waders or the desire to put our muddy feet in the car for the short ride home. We did dig into the pancakes though -YUMMO!

Nature Walking

Same neck of the woods on The Beaver Trail (insert your own jokes here) off Cedarview Road, not a week later than the Log Farm visit, the weather was at plus 28 degrees Celsius! We walked, ran, and sat down all the way through the forest to feed the chickadees and nuthatch from our hands. Only in the good weather they weren't so much interested in feeding as frolicking and mating! Wacka -Wacka! And we lost our bag of birdseed somewhere on the trail about 10 minutes into the walk. Ha ha.

Seester Sue, Fin & Aaron

Aaron and Moi!

Finley checking out the moss.

These are a couple of things my seester and I got up to while we visited in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. It's my home town and it's super fun to visit the places our parents took us with our own children.

Fin's FIRST Birthday Party

A Photo Essay of Fin's Party.

The Invite & The Table

It's strawberry season!

I made a spongecake with a strawberry jam fresh berry filling.

Steve made the real whip cream.

Fin's cake was french vanilla. YUMMY!

Strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese icing.

(Yes, Heather I'll make them for your 40th bday party!)

I decorated a few with little gummie animals.

They were a hit with the kids.

Fin playing UNDER the table.

I used to do the same thing at parties when I was a kid.

Opening Presents

Finley & Ike

I think they played hard to get with each other for like 5 seconds.

Mmm Cake. Steve serving up cake to Uncle Ryan.

Happy FIRST Birthday!!!

The year has flown by like everyone told me it would. Our lives are so much brighter with Finley. We love you Happy Birthday Sweet One!

Momma is not sitting on an ice pack this year - YAY!

Ladies Who Lunch

Finley and I were in Ottawa Ontario Canada - my home town - for Easter week. We had an awesome time visiting our family. On Easter Monday we had lunch with my mom's seester, my Aunt Dianne. Finley's great Aunt Dianne. She is Canada's answer to Paula Dean!

Aunt Dianne made little cream cheese and salmon sandwich fingers for Miss Fin with rice pudding and peaches for dessert.

Fin is waiting for lunch, she is taking in all of Aunt Dianne's beautiful house decor. So many treasures to see!

Aunt Dianne always has her aantique bears taking tea somewhere under a special piece of furniture. It's fun to look for them when we come to visit. The bears were replaced with bunnies for Easter and Finley had a blast tearing through the tea party. She broke two of the chairs...sorry Aunt Dianne!

Next time we visit I'll arrive with crazy glue.

Finley was all abut taking the Easter eggs out of the bowl. Most of them were marble...

The Easter tree to rival all Easter trees! Finley left with a gift of a little basket holding two chicks from Aunt Dianne's tree.

Thank you Aunt Dianne! It was an awesome visit and a DELICIOUS lunch! Finley was so BUSY I didn't have time to steal anything from your house this time! Or did I?

Kisses!

The Countdown Is On!

Our Finley Mae is turning ONE on Saturday April 10th!

Where has the year gone?

All I can think about is how fat I was this time last year, how I drank two litres of soy milk a day with a box of Shreddies. I wondered if my mother's instinct telling me I was carrying a daughter was wishful thinking or accurate. I wondered what our birth story would be, and if I would be terrified. I wanted a Natural birth and in a state where 76 percent of births are C sections I wondered how feasible my natural delivery would be. How would Steve and I get through it? Would our baby be okay? Would she look like me or Steve?

Now Steve and I have a little darling who plays peek a boo, runs a car across the floor making the bruuuum sound, points at the vacuum and tells her daddy rrrrvvvvuuuum, she signs (ASL) about 20 words and says DADDY clear as a bell. She is the light of our days. She is my greatest joy and Steve and I marvel daily on how spirited , bright, funny, smart and loving she is. Sometime we stop and look at each other and say: We made her.

And now we are planning a PARTAAAAAY! YIPEEE! I LOVE parties!