One of the many times the boys just hung out together.

One time at the beginning of July it started POURING when we got home from picking Jakob up from daycare. The only way we could convince him to come inside to eat supper was to promise he could go back out and play before bed. He spent over a half hour swirling a long stick in the rushing puddles. They were both soaked down to the skin by the time they came in, but Jakob was so happy that it was worth it.

The ever-observant Robyn*  pointed out to me today how it has been 2 months since my last post.  I don’t think this has happened since…ever?

It has been a hectic two months.  Everyone is doing great in Casa del Handmade, the kids are good, the adults are good, even the cat is good.  But a lot has been going on.  Kids have been sick, adults have been sick (and whiny), weights have been lifted, oldies (and newbies) have been sweated to, knits have been begun, knits have been given away, knits have been published(!) and knits are being planned.  Maternity leave is coming to an end, work is resuming and school is recommencing for the first time in 9 years (for me) and 13 years-or-so (for Yannick).  Lotsa stuff.

I know once I go back to work I’ll be spending some time at the computer and here’s my plan:  I’m going to upload all the photos I want to share.  That way all I’ll need to do is get some posting time and can publish all I want.  So expect a lot of mini-posts to come.  A LOT.  Some might be knitting, some might be the missing Henri weekly and monthly photos, some might just be cute stuff of the kids with a little recap of what was going on at that point.  I do want to share and I do miss y’all.  Where else in my life can I say “y’all”??

So expect a whack of stuff coming up.  It’s my holiday gift to y’all.

🙂

*link button not working, so you can find Robyn here: Knit & Purl Mama http://www.knitpurlknitpearl.blogspot.com

Good: Henri is 9 months old, 30″ tall and 22 lbs.  Very healthy (except for a bad cold and ear infection)

Bad: This means he has grown out of his carseat/bucket.  Now I have to buy a real car seat.

Good: Zellers has the one I like on sale, this exact week, and I managed to snag one.  I also managed to get an appointment today at the police station to have it professionally installed.

Bad: This means Henri is out of the bucket, making life harder when I do…almost everything.  Grocery shopping, picking Jakob up at daycare, everything now has to be done with one hand since I can’t pick up/put down the bucket any more.

Good: Since Henri is of a certain weight/height/abilities, the car seat is forward facing even though he is under 12 months.

Bad: Um…none really.  It was at his doctor’s recommendation, and the police Constable agreed.

Good: Turns out Henri will sleep in his car seat, unlike his bucket in which he hasn’t slept since forever.

Bad: Unlike the bucket, a sleeping baby in a car seat is not quite as portable.

Good: I knit and usually keep spare knitting with me.  Guess what I did for 5 minutes in my driveway this morning?  🙂

It’s snowing.

Le sigh.

1.  Went to the hospital this am to get my stitches taken out.  Anyone been to the (newly?) renovated Lakeshore Hospital?  It was cool- one very large open waiting area with different reception areas along the wall…felt like I was at an airport.  I think I was the only one happy to be there- I jokingly told the nurse to take her time calling my name as being there was my only baby-free break of the day!  I ended up with almost 2 hours of wait time even though I had an appointment, which translated to 2 hours of listening to knitting podcasts while knitting away.  Coffee by my side, window at my back…if it didn’t require stabbing myself in the hand first, I’d almost appreciate the experience!

The hand is coming along well, although it isn’t fully closed yet.  1 more week of no weight lifting or putting my weight on it (like push ups).  😦

2.  Discovered something disturbing the other day- I was reading a library book on Polymer Clay crafts (not a habit I’m getting into, I just like learning different craft techniques) and couldn’t figure out one of the projects.  The directions on facing pages just didn’t seem to flow together.  It took me another minute or two to realize that someone had CUT OUT THE PAGES with a particular project.  How horrible is that?  It costs 5-15 cents per page for photocopies, and anyone with a digital camera had a ready-made scanner.  And yet someone had to go deface this book and ruin it for everyone else.  Really irks me that people would have no qualms about doing that.

I was so looking forwards to last night.  The kids were both in bed and asleep by 7:30, I’d made a delicious supper (pork stuffed with bruschetta and feta, steamed broccoli and carrots, and honey/balsamic cherry tomatoes with pine nuts), and we had a DVR full of awesome shows to watch.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to knit or finally put some photos into the kids’ albums, but I knew I was going to park myself on the couch with Yannick and just veg.

And then I decided I wanted some fresh coconut.  I took the same paring knife I’ve been using for years to separate the meat from the shell, and after Yannick smashed it open for me, I started emptying the shell.  I’ve done it for years, same knife, same technique.  Last night…I dunno, I must have gotten distracted.  All of a sudden I realize I’d cut myself.  I was standing over the sink, so I opened the water, dropped the nut and the knife and went to rinse out the cut.

That’s when I realized it was over an inch long, over a centimeter deep, pumping out blood with every beat of my heart and showing some whiteish-yellow thick stuff inside the gaping hole.  And THAT’S when I yelled for Yannick to come help me.

It was the first time I’ve ever had to call 911 for a medical emergency, although my mom came over to watch the boys so we were able to cancel the ambulance and Yannick took me to the hospital instead.

You know it’s serious when you’re in and out of the hospital in 2.5 hours including ER wait time and treatment!

Tara’s husband has the FrankenFinger, I’ve got the FrankenThumbPad.  Luckily it’s my left hand and I’m a righty, but it’s still bad.  In the fleshy pad under my thumb, palm side.  Apparently the only reason the knife didn’t come straight out the back of my hand was because it hit the bone.  All this time at the gym- guess I don’t know my own strength!

I’ve got stitches in for 2 weeks then I have to go back and they’ll evaluate if I’ll need physio.  In the meantime I have to change the dressing every day and keep moving it, but it hurts like hell.  By using only my right thumb for the spacebar I can still type but everything else hurts.  If I do anything even slightly moving my left thumb I feel like the fresh wound is being torn open.  What sucks most is that I can’t do my workouts for a while.  I’d already just missed a week (story coming later) and now I have to miss a few more days.  Ugh.

To complicate matters further, they didn’t offer me any pain killers at the hospital, and I didn’t think of asking for any (I think I was slightly in shock).  Within 20 minutes of getting home the anesthetic they’d injected to do the stitches had worn off and it was just a raw wound.  I could feel every stitch, every gash, every millimeter of the cut.  The Tylenol I’d taken had done nothing for the pain, and the only thing stronger in the house was some leftover Demerol from when Yannick threw out his back last time.

I’m still nursing Henri, and I didn’t want to take anything without checking with InfoSante to make sure there were no risks.  So at 2 am when I couldn’t sleep because the pain was excruciating, Yannick called 811 and asked about the Demerol risks.  The nurse said that I couldn’t nurse for 24 hrs after taking the pills.  Yannick and I had a long talk about it, and we decided I’d take the pills.

I’d been planning on weaning Henri next week on the 8th, when he turned 9 months old.  1 week early makes no difference, and when Yannick agreed to help me out by taking the Henri duties for the next few days (since I can’t lift him easily right now anyways) I decided it would just be easier all around to wean him now.  Easier for Henri because it would be someone else giving him the bottles, so he won’t smell the milk on me.  Easier for me because I’ll have Yannick to help instead of doing it alone like I’d been planning.  Also easier for me becuase now I can take the Demerol for the pain.  It sucks that I didn’t know last night was my last nursing, so I didn’t enjoy every last second of it, enjoy him cuddled in my arms and knowing I was feeding my boy.  But I think it will work out for the best this way.

So if yesterday’s lesson was “don’t knit with the wrong size needle” then today’s lesson is “don’t use a sharp paring knife to get the meat out of a coconut”.  While they say bad luck happens in threes, please forgive me if I say I hope I have NO lesson to give you tomorrow!

I’m taking the night off from life.  I was going to post about how I’ll try to post more, maybe start uploading photos for the missing weekly Henri shots or the 7  month (!) chair photos.  But I’m not.

I just did my first-ever yoga class, and am feeling seriously mellow and looooose.  Before the buzz wears off I’m going to eat a light supper then crawl under the covers.  I don’t even care that it’s only 9pm.  I’m going to bring my Palm with some fun puzzle games, my iPod with old knitting podcasts (still back in 2006, boy I’m behind on EVERYTHING), turn on the kids’ monitors, and just do my own thing.

Ohhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm