I don’t usually capitalize my subject lines, but this deserves it- history has just been made!

Canada just won our first Olympic gold medal on Canadian soil.

Way to go Alexandre Bilodeau…a local boy from right here in Quebec!!!

…boring eh?

Coming in just so announce a few knitting things.

1. Finished my squares for Trina’s Log Cabin baby blanket being knit with Maaike. Now I have a gazillion ends to weave in, and then I’ll crochet the squares together, then together we will knit a border.  The baby is due in 2 weeks so I think we’ll be able to do it in time, if not then she’ll get it after the baby is born.

2. We had a mini Knitting Olympics at guild Tuesday night.  We could either knit a 41 sts x 30 rows solid red or solid white rectangle, or one the same size but using intarsia to knit it into a Canadian flag, complete with maple leaf and a red stripe on either side.  I went for the flag, and was the first to finish, ends woven in and all.  CO to BO in 1hr 10 min.  The Olympics haven’t even begun and I’m already a gold medalist!

The photo-less one is back!  It’s been one COLD week, and I didn’t even have knitting to keep my lap warm.  Honestly this week has been a bit of a blur.  Luckily thanks to the antibiotics we’re all fine and back at work/daycare, so every day has blended into the next.  Wake up, give the kids breakfast, Yannick drives Jakob to daycare, I go in to work with Henri, Yannick arrives at work, we work through the day, I take Henri with me to go pick up Jakob, bring the kids home, give them supper, Yannick arrives sometime between after-supper time and midnight, we study, we go to bed.  FUN, lemme tell you.

On Thursday I was smart and got a doctor’s note about my hernia, so Friday we changed things up a bit and I drove Jakob to daycare so I could stop in at my gym afterwards.  With the doctor’s note I was able to have them put a hold on my membership so I stop losing time, ‘cus I haven’t gone since the pain started getting worse.  This way once things are settled they will add back the time I’ve lost and I can get the benefit of the rest of my membership.  I’m glad that’s settled!  When I was going 6x/week I managed to drop about 20 lbs and 24″, but want to get a bit more out of it before my membership expires.  I’m still not sure what I want to do when it is over- I love weight training but can’t bear to think of getting up at 5am the rest of my life.  Maybe I’ll look into getting some equipment for the house instead.

I actually knit a little this week.  I know, I know…strange but true.  Maaike* and I are knitting a baby blanket for a mutual friend, a log cabin variation in 5 colors of Cascade 220 Superwash.  We’re each knitting 8 squares and will seam them together afterwards.

I’ve been having some gauge issues but it seems to be settled.  Maaike knit the first square and gave it to me to match my gauge to.  Unfortunately my first needle choice (4mm) gave me a center square significantly smaller than hers.  My second choice (4.5mm) also seemed small, and my third choice (5mm) seemed prettyclose but not quite spot-on.  I couldn’t go up any further, because a fourth attempt with a size yet larger (5.5mm) was about an inch too big in all directions.  Clearly something strange was going on.  I went back to the 5mm and finished the square center, then did the 2 attached stripes in contrasting colors.  Funny thing- when I held my center against Maaike’s, the center square was a touch small, but the stripes were dead-on.  The culprit all along was the yarn!  For some reason that color (the darkest of the 3 blues we were working with) was thinner than the others, so I ended up with a tighter gauge.  Crazy but true.  At least now I can get moving on them, as I have time.  I’ve decided that I need to make time for myself in all this crazy school/work/life stuff, so I’m making it a point to knit for a few rows before I settle in to study, and then maybe a few rows at the end if I got a good chunk of school work done.  I’m also making an effort to get ahead in my notes/exams so I will be able to afford the time to spend on the Knitting Olympics.  We’ll still have to see on that one though.

Henri is totally walking now, although he doesn’t know how to just stand up, so if he topples he’ll crawl until he reaches something he can grab to stand up, and then will walk until his next topple or until he reaches something.  He was a riot tonight, doing laps back and forth between Yannick and I, with Jakob finding it funny to follow him around.  It is so awesome to see them together- their faces both light up when one sees the other, and they truly already are best friends.  Jakob will stop whatever he is doing if Henri approaches, and will stroke his brother’s cheek and kiss him and gaze adoringly at him, and Henri finds everything Jakob does hysterical.  I love watching my boys together and am so happy that they are so close in age and have each other.  I can’t wait until the computer is working properly and I can post photos to show you the two in action!

Oh, and if I AM able to squeeze in the Knitting Olympics, I think my project is settled.  I have the pattern, the yarn and the challenge in both time and technique.  *fingers crossed…*

*BTW she hasn’t posted in over a year, so that’s FAR worse than me!

Here’s a summary of what’s been going on lately which might help explain just why I’m so busy.  Also a bit of what I’ve been up to:

-in August Henri got some strange rash on his foot.  He’s got crazy-bad eczema, so for a few days I just put cortisone on it and waited it out.  Then I saw how far across his foot it had spread.  I brought him to the doctor and he thought it was scabies.  Gave us a cream.  Cream did nothing.  By the end of the weekend it had spread to his 2nd foot.  I called his skin doctor (not his pediatrician, but he’s actually followed by the head of dermatology at the Children’s Hospital) and brought him in.  They thought it was some virus, did a culture and gave us a different medicine.  It did nothing.  When we’d gone to the hospital Monday morning it was on both feet and one spot of his hand.  By Tues am it was across all his fingers and a few on his face.  By Wed it was on both hands and up to his forehead.  I brought him back to the hospital and they wanted to wait out their meds to see if they would “kick in”.

I happened to mention that that same morning (Wed) I’d woken up with a CRAZY sore throat and was positive I had strep, and would be seeing my own doctor that afternoon.  Since one of the sores on Henri’s hand was open and oozing, they swabbed it.  Got the call the next day- he had a Group A Strep superinfection.

From my limited medical knowledge, I would guess that I’d caught the strep somewhere, and before the symptoms manifested in me, I’d got the germs on my hand and then when I rubbed the creams on his feet 2x/day for his eczema, I must have got the bacteria into him.  His eczema really is so bad that his skin is weaker in those areas.  Luckily we both got onto antibiotics and right away there was an improvement.  It really scares me to think of what could have happened to him if I hadn’t mentioned my own illness, because I think that next the bacteria would have gotten into his blood and then who knows.  But we caught it and other than some areas where the redness from the sores hasn’t completely faded, he’s perfectly fine.  It was a scary time, though.  But my little guy smiled through it all.  No matter how itchy he is, how much his skin hurts or what bacteria is eating him alive, the kid never cried, never was grumpy, in fact they kept thinking he wasn’t as sick as he was at the hospital because one of the symptoms of something being bad is for the kid to be out of it or excessively cranky, and he wouldn’t stop  smiling ‘cus he was getting attention.

-in September Yannick and I celebrated out 3rd wedding anniversary and our birthdays. There was probably more stuff but I don’t have my camera near by to check photos and I’m not near my calendar.

-in October (I think) I participated in the West Island Knits’ First Ever Knitathon to raise money for breast cancer research.  It was organized by the Idon’tknowhowshetakesonsomuchstuffandpullsitoffsuccessfullybutshe’sawesomeatitnoreallyjustwow Robyn, and I think our little group of 8-10 knitters managed to raise just over $7000.  That totally rocked.  I knit a chemo cap to be part of our bunch to donate, then spent the rest of the time working on…

-in November I finished a big knit.  I knit something for Veronik for her Spring issue of the magazine with patterns to support her St-Denis Nordique line of yarn.  You can actually see what I knit in this photo,which I think is ok to say since Veronik posted it herself.   Squeeeee!!  Oh yeah, I should probably share that the reason I’m so excited is not just that I knit for Veronik.  I’ve test knit for her before, and while it’s fun, THIS time is even more exciting for me, ‘cus it was MY pattern.  😀  More info on that as I can share it!

Also in November I found out that what I’d thought was a strange, intermittent muscle cramp near my belly button off-and-on since Henri has been born is actually  supposedly a hernia.  Good times.

-in December I finished all my deadline knitting that was due and cast on something for ME.  (Which, of course, means it it sitting at the bottom of one of my knitting bags, thrust carelessly aside for stuff I’d forgotten about that had deadlines).

-in January Henri turned 1. ONE.  I don’t have  babies any more- I’ve got a toddler and a child.  I’d wax about time, how fast, enjoy it, etc, but you know how it goes.  They’re little, and they grow.  I’m still trying to figure out when and where, ‘cus I know I had a baby around here someplace recently.

Also in January I returned to work.  With Henri, as I did 2 years ago with Jakob.  He’ll be coming with me to work until he’s 18 months and can start at our daycare.  The biggest difference is that now I don’t only work with my dad and son.  Yannick, who had replaced me while I was on mat leave, is staying on.  Which means I am working with my father, my son and my husband.  All day.  Every day.  Foreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever.

ALSO in January Yannick and I returned to school.  Yup.  As if it wasn’t enough to work full time with a child, I’m a student again.  We are doing a 4 year correspondence program out of NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) to become opticians.  This way my dad can retire one day and not worry that the store will have to close, or be sold.  🙂  So now on top of work, and the kids, and the house, I also have the fun of nagging my husband to study, since we have 1-2 mini exams every 28 days, plus other assignments.  I’d thought it was going to be a slower, go-at-your-own-pace thing, but no.  It’s the equivalent to a full-time school program, 8 hrs/day, but shoved into our existing schedules.

Which is why I haven’t done much knitting since school started.  At first I’d thought I’d have time, so I finished a quick project for Henri for his birthday.  Then last week some upcoming school deadlines hit me in the face and now I feel like we’re behind a little.  So unless I’m somewhere where I can’t actually study (like that wait in the dr’s office I mentioned), I don’t knit.

I’m trying to get enough done in advance so that I can participate in the  Knitting Olympics.  Otherwise I’ll have to bow out, which would suck ‘cus I know what I want to work on.  Although, I guess with the way things are right now, even knitting a garter dishcloth would be a challenge!  🙂

And as if all this weren’t enough, 2 weeks ago was Henri’s birthday party.  We put the kids down for their naps in the afternoon and when Jakob woke up he had 103.5 fever.  The next morning (last Monday) he had the same fever, and a spot like a fever blister on his cheek, so we kept him home.  His fever went away and by that night it was as if it had never come, so he went to school on Tues.  By Tues afternoon the school said it was back, and he was out of it, and the spot on his cheek was now a cluster plus one on his arm and one on his tummy.  The arm and tummy ones had scabbed over.  His school asked that we bring him to the doctor before bringing him back, which was fine with me ‘cus I wanted to know what those spots were anyways.  They said it was just a virus, and as soon as he had no fever for 24 hrs he could go back to school.  Well, he’d had no fever Tues before bed, and no fever all day Wed or Wed night, so we sent him to school on Thurs.

Separately I woke up Thursday and thought “hmm…my throat hurts a bit”.  Yannick drove Jakob to school and I drove to work with Henri so we’d get there on time for his morning nap.  By the time he was asleep I couldn’t bear to swallow and was so cold that sitting at my desk I had on my sweater, jacket, mittens, scarf, the pinwheel blanket I’d knit for Henri over my shoulders and another little blanket of his over my lap, and I was still cold and wishing I’d put on a tshirt under my sweater.  And I ALWAYS overheat.  By 11 Yannick and my dad were kicking me out and my plan was to go to my mom’s with Henri so she could help me feed him, then I’d put him down for his nap there and sleep myself, ‘cus I was really sick.  I was sure I had the flu, mainly ‘cus I was so cold and my whole body ached.  (Well, my back probably ached ‘cus I’d fallen down the stairs with Henri in my arms the day before and slid down on my back, but that’s neither here nor there.  It was a rough week!)  Anyways, as I was pulling away from the store Yannick called my cell to say Jakob’s school called and wanted us to come get him, he was really lethargic and clingy and clearly all was not well.

So I went to get Jakob.  I was so sick by the time I got there that I had to borrow a plastic bag ‘cus I thought I’d throw up while driving.  Somehow we made it to my mom’s house, I gave the kids lunch with my sister’s help and got them down for naps.  I think I fell asleep with Jakob then my mom had me move to the couch when she got home.  That afternoon was Henri’s 1 year checkup so we brought Jakob with too to get him seen by the doctor.  Henri is great, although quite big (90-95% for height and weight! 31″ tall and 25lbs 11, fully dressed).  Jakob was still said to just have a virus, wait it out.  I was feeling a bit better, having slept.

We got the boys home, I put them to bed and passed out myself around 8:30 ‘cus the chills came back when my Advils wore off.  Obviously I was keeping Jakob home on Friday, and my parents were busy packing for a trip so I stayed home with both boys.  By 9:30am I knew I needed a doctor, I couldn’t wait until my already-booked appointment with my dr on Monday (consult for the hernia, which has been getting more painful).  My dr’s office was fully booked, so I had no choice but to pack up the double stroller and go to a walk-in clinic with the boys.  Thankfully they were super well behaved.  Jakob got some big awwwwwwwwwws from the ladies there for the following:

They had me wear a face mask, and he asked me to take it off.  I said I couldn’t take it off until we saw the doctor to fix “Mommy’s boo-boo throat”.  He looked at me all serious and asked, “Mommy has boo-boo throat?”

Me-“Yes.”

Jakob-“I kiss it better?”

Me-“Aww, ok.”  I tilted my head back so he could kiss my neck.

Jakob-taking my face in his hands to look into my eyes, “All better now?”

How could you say no to that?  He’s sooooooooooo sweet!

This is getting to be a long post.  Let me try to sum up.  3 hr wait at clinic.  Turns out I have strep throat again.  That’s actually good news, ‘cus that means meds.  A virus means waiting.  Got antibiotics, and now (as of this writing) am perfectly fine.

Saturday Jakob’s spots were from ear to ear (the ones on his body hadn’t spread like his face, and were still just the 2 scabs).  Also Henri had a rash on his hand that looked…familiar.  Brought both boys BACK to their doctor.  They finally found something with Jakob- turns out he had an ear infection.  Probably explains why he woke from his nap the day before just sobbing with no answer to “what hurts?”.  As for Henri, I knew from looking at it that he had another Strep A superinfection.  For some reason his dr’s office finds it hard to believe that that is what he’d had last time (even though he’d had a positive culture at the hospital) and even more doubtful that he had it again this time.  But they took me at my word, didn’t bother  swabbing him and just gave me meds for him, stating that it was safer to treat him even if it turned out to be nothing, than to not believe me and have it really be the superinfection and have it go really badly.  So in the course of 2 days all 3 of us wound up on penicillin.  Now it’s been a week and all 3 of us are MUCH better.  So it was a rough week, but we made it through!

What else before I go?  Oh yeah, so I saw the dr for my hernia, and have made an appointment to see a surgeon in 2 months.  I don’t think I’ll need surgery, but it’s the next step.  I have more to say on that, but this is getting crazy long.

Oh, and finally, Henri’s walking!  A full 2 months before Jakob did, he’s really proud of himself, and we’re really proud of him.

(And I’m really proud of you if you managed to make it through this long rambling post!)

That worked out well, huh?  All those photos you got?  All those tons of posts once I started back at work?

Um, yeah.  Sorry about that.  See, the thing is, I’m busy these days.  Like ALL THE TIME.  As of this post I think I knit last about a week ago, last Sunday afternoon, and what a mess that was!  Oh no- sorry, I knit on Monday at the doctor’s office during an almost 2 hr wait.

Ok, really, this is silly.  Here’s why I’m not posting, like since Henri’s been born:

-my main computer is in the basement in my office

-I upload photos from my camera to the  computer in the basement

-until very recently there was no room in the house where I could leave Henri unattended while he’s awake without putting him in a crib or playpen and hearing him scream, and I won’t do that to him just so I can go blog.

-because of the boys, life, etc, I would only manage to get downstairs to the computer to sync my camera once a week or so, and that was about all the time I had.  Forget going through, sorting, renaming or editing the photos.

-we have a really old laptop that we keep in the living room, which is how I manage to check my emails and stuff.  Before I switched to gmail I was using an email that pulled directly into my Outlook, and I never used the web mail checker.  Which meant that for most of last year I was able to check my email once every 2 weeks or so, whenever I’d have a chance to run downstairs.

-once the photos are on the computer I need to do all that sorting stuff before I can post any of them.  Only after they’re renamed, etc, are they in a folder that is accessible by the laptop via our network.  I don’t have media edition of XP, so I can’t use the remote desktop feature.  (Yet…one day soon, hopefully!)

-I keep telling myself that a) you guys don’t want posts without photos, so if I don’t have time to go down and go through the growing folders of photos, then I need to put off posting, and b) that you guys don’t want outdated stuff shoved in out of order, so I can’t post new things that are happening until I catch up on all the  backdated stuff.

But that’s just silly.  At this rate I’ll NEVER catch up.

So here’s the deal.  I’m going to post.  If I feel like writing, I’ll write.  If I have the photos to go with my post, I’ll post them.  If not, I’ll post them later, and say “this is what I was talking about”.  I’m sure you’ll get it.  And when I get the photos of the really old stuff, like Henri’s weekly photos and such, sorted out, I’ll post them too.  And if you don’t care about seeing what Henri was doing 3-6 months ago, then you can skip that post.  I won’t mind.  I’d rather you be here, reading and skipping, then going away and never coming back because I don’t post any more.

I miss you.

I’m thinking of asking Yannick to help me organize my yarn stash tonight.  One of my maternity leave goals was to enter my stash into Ravelry, and I go back to work next Tuesday.  Hmph.  I have it mostly organized into large Rubbermaid bins, but out of the 15 bins(!!!) 4 are a mess of stuff I need to organize into the others.  Plus there is only SO much old acrylic that I need to keep for future toymaking.  I know he’d be willing to help me go through it if it means some of it leaving this house…but do I really want him to see how much I have?  I mean, he’s seen the bins.  But they’re opaque.  It’s a whole ‘nother ballgame when you see how much can be crammed into each one.  This is yarn, people.  It squishes!

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here (probably because I’ve been away so long) but I participated in a 6-month-long intensive fitness program.  It’s called the Lean Eating Coaching Program, done through Precision Nutrition, and for 6 months (June 1st to November 30th) I had a strict regimen of lessons, training and assignments, all done daily.    Going to the gym 6 days per week was quite new to me, but I’m happy to say that 23 days out of the program, and I’m still doing at least 3-4 workouts a week.  I’m trying to build back up to 6 days, but the only time I can fit the gym into my schedule at a time I know I will stick to is to go at 5:30 am.  I’ve been doing it but it’s tough, especially if I stay up too late the night before.  I need to force myself to get to bed earlier!

In any case, during the program, every Saturday was measurement day.  I had to submit my weight along with girth measurements for 7 sites on the body, one of which is the upper arm.  Yannick would do my measurements for me, and two of the spots required him making a small pen mark on me as a guide marker.  For the upper arm, for example, we had to measure at the halfway point between the shoulder bone and the point of the elbow.  I was aiming for consistency so we would actually measure the distance and mark the halfway point.

Well.  On this particular Saturday I was urging Yannick to hurry up, as it was my custom to do cardio on Saturdays, usually a class at the gym, and I was running late.  Apparently I was being a little snarky with him so he decided to have some fun…and draw on me.

Somewhere around the eyes or mouth was the actual required mark.  The rest was his way of getting back at me for snapping at him.  It was really cute but more than half of it showed when my tshirt sleeve was down, and since I was running late I had no time to spare to start scrubbing the ink off.  I had no choice but to go and do my workout with this “tattoo” on my arm.

It was a great conversation starter!