2010 – Page 7 – a hippie with a minivan

9 Months…

OK, OK I am a bit late… Wilhelmina is nearly 9 1/2 months already, but I guess it is better now than never.

I can’t believe that more than 9 months have passed since my little girl was born. There are many that insist that there are no differences between girls and boys but I don’t agree, I can see that there are differences, and with 3 boys, I embrace those differences. She seems to admire me as a brush my hair and she loves to have her hair brushed as well and lets me play with her hair. She is a lot more sensitive and more calm than her brothers were at the same age. It might also be a reflection fo the way that her brothers treat her of course, but by 9 months old, Colin and Khéna were both already play-fighting with their older brother(s)…. She in turn is ver gentle. Though she enjoys biting books, she equally enjoys being read to, something the boys never seemed to have the patience for as babies.

When we are out she doesn’t say a word, she just observes and cuddles or goes to play but is so content. She loves being out and about, except for the car ride, though that has been a lot better in the last months. She is shy, but not overly so. She quickly warms up to people, especially the guys. A the workshops I give she just plays contently, coming to see me to nurse or pee… otherwise she is happily doing her own thing.

She loves her brothers, and me of course, but I think her favourite person in the world is daddy…There are evenings that she doesn’t even want me and only wants Simon.A true daddy’s girl 🙂

She has started to eat a bit here and there but it is not a daily thing and she is still getting all of her nutrition from me. She now has 6 teeth and hopefully we will get a bit of a break before the next ones come in. It effects her mood so much and she gets a rash… even though she doesn’t wear a diaper…

EC is going great. We catch about 75% of the pees and all of the poos… Most of the pees that we miss are in the morning. Since she stays dry all night and only wakes in the morning to pee and nurse, she has a lot of pees when she gets up… sometimes every 5-10 min for the first hour… then she goes back to her normal frequency and we catch most of the rest. During the day she wears one-wet underwear or is bare-bum… and the same at night. When we are out it is the easiest, especially when we are busy and going from place to place. She pees when we get out of the car, and then when we get back in and remains dry the rest of the time… even for 2-3 hours…

Wilhelmina now has a few words also… her first word was “Caca”, and she says that when she needs to eliminate. She has been saying that one for at least 2 months now. Her next was “Cat” and now “Mama” and “Dada” and have been added… I love to hear her say actual words… though it makes her seem a bit older than I am ready for…

She can get anywhere she needs to go,but isn’t walking yet… (I say that because I have had early walkers) She is still not completely confidant to stand on her own, but will do so if she forgets that she is doing it. She can walk holding onto our hands, or a toy, or furniture or the wall and will take mini-steps between two pieces of furniture. Once she gets that confidence going it, the steps will not be far behind.

All in all, I am enjoying every minute of her growing and changing. Knowing that she is our last last makes every milestone bitter-sweet. My little baby is changing and becoming less and less of a baby… My kids are growing up…

Daylight savings…

I love today…Each time we “fall back” it gives me a boost.

We didn’t get that extra hour of sleep extra hour of sleep that everyone talks about… Kid’s biological clocks don’t seem to come with the automatic daylight saving mode. However, I did wake up this morning refreshed and started on my day right away. I loved when I looked at the time I realized that I needed to change the clocks and magically an hour was added to my morning. By 7:30 my bread was rising and split peas were soaking for soup…

I always get into a habit of going to bed late at the end of summer/start of autumn and then I start have more trouble waking up in the morning.

Changing the time back gives me a boost to get back on a better sleeping schedule for the winter. Having the sun come up sooner helps morale in the morning, though the drawback of course is that it is completely dark before suppertime…

Tonight biological clocks will be working in our favour. The kids will go to bed a bit earlier and we’ll be in bed earlier… a little energy gained for the long winter months ahead.

water + gravity = mess

On Saturday morning, two weekends ago, I got out of the shower, walked into my room and saw drops of water on the floor looking like water had splashed. I looked around, not understanding where the water would be coming from. I heard a drop, then another and another and I saw that my comforter was soaked and then looked up and saw that water was dripping from the ceiling fan. I turned the light off, ran up stairs (our room is in the basement) and went to figure out where the water was coming from. The sewing room is above my room… so it was the first place I checked. No water there. I went into the bathroom… no water there…

We looked more and finally found that the problem was in the bathroom, the pipe under the sink was broken and water was running into the cabinet, out the back and into the floor and of course the ceiling below. We don’t know how long we had had the problem, but the water dripping from the fan was the first clue… There was no water on the floor in the bathroom, there was no other sign. While Simon turned off the valves, I called the insurance company and over the course of the day the ceiling started to sag. Simon touched it a few times and each time he did I cringed. The next day it was even worse. On Monday morning the emergency crew came over, looked at the ceiling and went into action right away and took off all of what was wet… taking out more than half a large bucket’s worth of water from the ceiling, held up above our bed by just a few layers of paint.

The insurance guy came in the week, then the evaluator and it was all sent to the construction company with the estimated cost of the damages are about 3 500$…

The work in our room is just putting a ceiling up and repainting, but the bulk of the cost is the vanity. The vanity doesn’t look effected, but it is all wet and needs to be taken out. The vanity in the bathroom is the bulk of our bathroom, the drawers are used every day, the cabinet is used every day. The sink is there. It is where I potty Wilhelmina. Next week they will come start the work and part of that will tearing be out the vanity. It needs to be replaced, they said that their carpenter is quite busy, they said that it might be a month before we have a vanity/sink again.

I hate the uncertainty of when things will be back to normal, I have that there will be people in the house making even more of a mess…

I am also looking forward to having a bedroom ceiling again. It is not the look of the missing ceiling as much as the fact that when Simon takes a shower in the morning before heading to work, the sound of the shower is amplified by the big space and it sound like I am in the shower with him…

It’s not the end of the world of course, but it is all a big inconvenience for a family of 6…

*sigh*

clutter…clutter… clutter…

I was looking back at old posts this morning and realized that there is a pattern of me needed and wanting to declutter in November. Seriously, blogging is a great way to see what was happening in previous years.

Yesterday I put Wilhelmina on my back and attacked the cupboard above the fridge. It attacked me back and I have the bandages toe to prove it. It still seems full but I got rid of a half of a garbage bag worth of stuff. I still can’t fathom how that all fit in there! The more I declutter the more I realize how much I have (or had) a problem with keeping things. I was always thinking “maybe I’ll need this one day” and it would just sit there for years. My mom had the same issue when I was younger, there were times that we didn’t have much so she kept a lot of things ‘just in case”. The house was always clean, but there was clutter.

It is hard cycle to break but it feels so good now to get rid of things. It feels so good to have space to put things, to see what I have instead of forgetting about things. It feels good to be able to clean up the main living space easily and quickly. It feels great to know where things are and be able reach it without clutter getting in the way. It feels great to look at room and only see things that you like, and need and use. It is that feeling that drives me now. When I look at the things that I was keeping “just in case” I am starting to see it as what is preventing me to be happy in my home. I see it as garbage and well, clutter.

I would like for us to sell our house and move closer to Montreal. Even if that means renting again. I can’t fathom doing so with so much clutter in our lives. I was to simplify, I was to make things easier, I want have less things to think about if we were to move.

I also want to break the cycle with my kids. Xavier has a lot of problems letting go of things, I want to teach him that letting go is OK… yesterday, as I filled that garbage bag I was proud to see that Xavier came and looked at what I was doing, and accepted that the things in there and accepted that they would be leaving the house. He didn’t protest when he saw the old sandbox next to the curb, and was excited to see that it was gone about an hour later.

I try to do a bit every day, even if it is just a stack of papers or a kitchen utensil that I don’t use any more. We still have a lot to do, but our efforts are working and little by little the weight of having so much stuff around us is being lifted.

Quiet time…

I have to admit that having four kids drives me crazy at times…

Unless they are all sleeping, there is constant noise… narrating games, animating figurings, making sound effects while drawing,knocking things over, rolling trucks on the floor… It is hard to get some some quiet time. Some people that know me think I am patient, but days like today, I am far from it. It is really hard to be parent some days, especially when you are someone who is sensitive to noise. The more I try to get quiet time, the more I get annoyed by each sound.

So on days like this, I turn on the music, I make things louder, I sing out loud and dance with a kid or two or three or four and I embrace the noise…

I’ll have some Quiet time when they are sleeping…