NaBloPoMo – Page 12 – a hippie with a minivan

I seriously wonder…

I pondered this this morning as I was washing dishes, getting a stew ready in crockpot and making breakfast for the kids simultaneously…

How do people get things done without babywearing?

I can’t imagine being a parent and not having my hands free.

I wear Willa while I clean, while I cook, while I sew, while I tend to the other kids.

When we are out, Willa goes from the car seat straight into the carrier and I have my hands and eyes for the tasks at hand and the other kids. She is warm and content and is able to see everything I do… People talk to her and not down at her and she is part of the outing at all times…When she is playing and she gets tired, I can just scoop her up, put her in the sling or on my back and she asleep within a minute or two…

Besides Breastfeeding… A good carrier is the ultimate parenting tool…

Split pea soup…

This is based on a Quebecois dish “Soupe aux pois” which is traditionally made with a ham bone, salt pork belly and yellow slit peas. I made a ham the night before and threw out the bone before I had the craving to make this soup, and I didn’t have/want the salt pork belly so I so just used a bit of leftover smoked ham, though you can leave that out also if you really wanted to but the smoky flavour really adds to this dish…

This is another of those very easy soups… though you do need to allow for a few hours of cooking…

First soak 2 cups of dried yellow slit pea in water for 1 1/2 hours…

Chop up some leftover smoked ham (about 2 cups)

Celery (2 stalks)

Carrot (3)

Then Chop up a large onion…

Drain the peas and you’re ready to assemble…

In a large soup pot with a bit of olive oil, Sauté the onion until translucent, season with a bit of salt and pepper, add the remainder of the ingredients and 10 cups of water. Bring to a boil and then down to a simmer and let simmer for about 2 1/2 hours… the peas will fall apart on their own…

Adjust seasonings (I added about a tsp of garlic powder and 1/3 tsp of smoked paprika) and that’s it!

Of course I serve it with my homemade bread 🙂

Can you believe that I used to refuse to eat any kind of soup?

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*