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soooo tired

Usually Yannick and I take turns getting up with the kids while the other gets to sleep in a bit longer.  The store opens only at 10am on Saturdays, so that’s his morning to sleep in until 9, and Mondays (our day off) is my morning to sleep in while he takes the kids to daycare.  Sundays we both get up ‘cus that’s swimming lesson morning.  Well there has been so much going on lately that I don’t think I’ve had a chance to sleep in in almost a week! 

Last week we had another hospital appointment for Henri, followed on what should have been my next morning to sleep in by his 2-year checkup, then Monday (yesterday) I couldn’t sleep in ‘cus I had my annual physical, and this morning I got up even earlier to go down to the hospital for my preop for my hernia surgery (again!) in early March.  Well…I *thought* I had to go today.  Of course, I only found out that my appointment was actually TOMORROW after arriving at the hospital and waiting long enough to have to pay for parking.  Great, not only do I have to pay again tomorrow, but it’s one more day I can’t sleep in.

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Sunday was our first swimming lesson of this session ‘cus we skipped last week as it started too close to Henri’s birthday party and we didn’t want to rush it that much.  Now that Henri’s in “white”, it’s the first time that neither Yannick or I went in the water with him.  I honestly didn’t think he’d sit on the side of the pool, I fully expected him to keep getting up and running around the pool.  Luckily he stayed put!  He did cry quite a bit, but he stayed where he was supposed to, and was laughing and splashing by the end of the class, so there was definately improvement!

I don’t remember if I mentioned that Maaike came over to do a photoshoot for the latest KP pattern.  We had to use Jakob’s room and since he wasn’t sleeping anyways we just opened the lights and went in.  He was being EXTREMELY silly and playful and while I was setting up some shots Maaike snapped some really cute photos of him.  This is one of my favorites. 

I just realized- can you see the two blankets in the photo?  The blue/white one to the right is the entrelac blankie I knit while pregnant with him, and the white one to the left is the alphabet blankie I knit while pregant with him.  He likes having both in bed with him, and sometimes asks me to “wrap him up in Mommy’s love” to go to sleep.  🙂

Since I’ve had some good wait times lately, either in the car while Yannick drove, or while waiting at doctor’s offices, I’ve had a chance to work on my Featherweight Cardigan.  Last week I split the arms and body and now am continuing on the body part first.  Once the body is to length I will do the front band, THEN move onto the arms.  I don’t mind if the arms are three-quarter-length or even short-sleeved, but it will really suck if I run out of yarn doing the front band, ‘cus this yarn is from my grandmother’s stash and I don’t think it would be possible to get any more.  Besides the bit shown I’ve still got 7 more balls.  What you see so far (including the ball still attached) is 3 balls.  I don’t think I’ll run out…but just to be safe that’s how I’m going to handle it.

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And now I’ve just finished some paperwork for work that I started at 7:00pm and just finished about 10 minutes ago (11:40pm).  I have to be back at the hospital for 8am tomorrow for the REAL pre-op, so I’m going to take 2 Tylenol 1s (for the pain in my leg and belly) and hopefully fall asleep right away.


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henri’s 2nd birthday

Ok!  I’m here with time to post, and post I shall!  🙂

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When for most people things start to slow down after the holiday rush, for me things were only getting started.  As I mentioned last post, I spent the first week of the year making the food for the party.  Over 100 gingerbread man-shaped cookies were baked on Tues, iced on Wed and had faces hand-drawn on Thurs.

On Friday the 7th I rented a 3D Cruiser cake pan from our local cake supply store and baked the car-shaped cake out of chocolate cake mix, and a 9 x 13 sheet cake out of vanilla cake mix.  I was afraid the car cake pan itself wouldn’t be enough to feed everyone.  It took 1.75 boxes of cake mix, but it’s an odd shape, so I couldn’t guarantee it would be cut in a way that would give enough slices.

Saturday the 8th was the actual big day- Henri’s 2nd birthday!

I can’t believe he’s 2 already!  He’s such a big boy, and I mean that quite literally.  Not only has the word explosion hit full force (over 100 words, 15+ songs and 8-word-+ sentances), but he is also a BIG boy- 3 feet tall and 32 lbs 12 oz…the same weight and maybe an inch shorter than his almost 4-year-old brother!  He’s been 95th percentile for height and 75-90th for weight since he was 3 months old.

Henri is my happy, stubborn, silly little monkey.  He’s his brother’s best friend, and the perfect last piece to complete our family.  Every day he makes me so happy to be his mom, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s turned into a Mommy’s Boy.  🙂  Yannick’s not used to having one of our kids turn to me before him, but hey- at least this way we’ve each “got one” LOL.

Once the kids went to bed Saturday night I got down to business.  It took me about 3-4 hours to make my own buttercream icing, tint the colors I needed, crumb-coat and then decorate the cake.  I’m never happy with the cakes I make while they’re in progress, but so far I’ve been pretty pleased with the final outcome, and while Henri’s still a little young, Jakob has been wowed.  (In fact, 2 days after his last birthday party he told me that his cake was a blue dinosaur, which it was, and then requested a red Lightning McQueen cake for his next birthday…a request he has made approximately 856,355,674,301 times since then).

Sunday morning was Henri’s birthday party with all his friends.  The party was Wiggles-themed, from the invites that had a photo of all the Wiggles characters with Henri’s head superimposed on Henry the Octopus, to the 4 yellow, red, blue and purple-shirted cookie men in the lootbags, all the way down to the cake which you’ll see in a minute.  My favorite touch was a special appearance by the “Wiggles” themselves!  I had to promise no YouTube appearance, but as a little treat for Henri my dad, one of my brothers, my cousin and Yannick dressed up in yellow, blue, red and purple tshirts and did a lip-synch to one of Henri’s favorite Wiggles songs- Fruit Salad.  My brother, who wore the red shirt like Murray, even brought his guitar for some “authenticity”.  🙂  My other brother was supposed to do it, but he went to France and missed the party, so my dad was a very gracious Zaida and stepped in to wear the purple shirt.

I was too busy to pull out my camera, but my friend Avi took some gorgeous photos for us:
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Here’s Jakob!
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The birthday boy and Daddy.
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The cake!

The cake was completed around midnight Saturday night, but just before serving (Sunday, 11:15am) I tucked in the 4 Wiggles cookies that I’d reserved.
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The birthday boy and Mommy!
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I’ll leave you with my favorite shot from all of Avi’s pictures.  I love everything about it- and every time I see it, it makes me smile.


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so much for a streak

I’m a little bummed at missing out after having daily posts since the new year, but I don’t feel too bad ‘cus it’s been one hell of a busy week.  Photos to come once I upload, but basically every  night I was in full Keebler-elves sweatshop mode, baking up a storm for Henri’s birthday party on Sunday, as his 2nd birthday was on Saturday.  I put cookies in all the kids’ lootbags, so on Tuesday night I baked 100 cookies (4 each for 23 lootbags, then more to have a few extra in case of breakage), on Wednesday night I made my royal icing and iced 100 cookies, and on Thursday night I drew faces on all of them.  🙂  Then on Friday I had to bake my cakes, and on Saturday I made my own buttercream icing and spent 3-4 hours icing the cake, plus baking all the other food and getting everything else ready.

Tonight is guild so I won’t have a chance to upload my pics, unless I’m still awake when I get home.  But they will be up very soon and this blog will be a more colorful place.


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two days to go

…until Henri’s 2nd birthday! I spent part of my night designing the last bit of the KP pattern, and then a little time putting the finishing touches on the mini loot bags for Henri’s daycare “party”, which is basically singing and cupcakes when the kids wake from their nap.


It’s just a mini fingerpaint pot with a stamp on the top, and a candy cane, with a label my mom printed for me that says “thanks for celebrating with me”.
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We got a fun little surprise in the mail today- Jakob got a letter from Santa!


I’m really not sure how we got it, I never signed him up for it, but he was super excited about it and called up Daddy and Bubbie right away to tell them.
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There is power in good thoughts. Emilie (http://www.dearknits.blogspot.com) is out of surgery and I think is doing well.


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time to call it a night

I’d like to write up a bit more but my main computer is being glitchy and I’m too tired to hunt and peck on the iPhone for a long post. It’s been a rough night so I’m tagging myself out before anything else starts to hurt. The notions box is closed and I’m off to bed.


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no photos

…’cus I’m lazy, but there was knitting today.

-Took Henri to the doctor after literally 24hrs of non-stop crying. In the middle of the night the cries were mixed with “boo boo ear!”. The cause for the fever since Friday? Double ear infection. Yup, after just finishing a round of antibiotics. Luckily Jakob’s fever seems to have passed.

-knit while watching Inception. 13 more repeats until the great divide!


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girls from my past

I can’t make this a long post, ‘cus Henri has been crying for most of the day and I want to get back upstairs where I can hear him.  I just wanted to share a recent find with you.

We were at my parents’ house yesterday and I came across a bin of figurines they’d put aside for my boys.  I couldn’t believe it- it was all the toys from when I was a kid!  My brothers and I used to play for HOURS with He-Man, She-Ra and Golden Girl figures, Ninja Turtles (the originals), the Justice League, Thunder Cats, Voltron, etc.  (My sister is 10 years younger than me so she skipped most of that stuff and was weaned on Pound Puppies and Popples).  Finding the bin was such a blast from the past that I couldn’t pass up the chance to bring home my old friends.

This first pic has all the “fighter” figures.

Top Row: Sorceress (He-Man), April O’Neil (TMNT)

Bottom Row: Teela (He-Man), Allura (Voltron), Catra (She-Ra), WilyKat & WilyKit (Thundercats)

This one has all the “girly” figures I found: a mix of Cabbage Patch, Raggedy Ann, Daisy Duck, Barbie, and assorted Strawberry Shortcake characters (with the Purple Pieman in there for kicks).

So apparently when I was a kid I thought it was cool to fight crime, dress sexy, have babies and smell good.  Who says we didn’t empower our girls long before the Spice Girls came around?  🙂

Since I only have boys, and my siblings don’t have kids (yet) I claimed “my girls”.  My boys are welcome to play with them when they’re a bit older, but in the meantime they will live in my office and remind me of who I used to be.


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3rd trip to dr in 2 weeks

There’s this strange virus going around where you get fever for 5 or so days.  Not a gastro, not really a “flu”…just a virus you have to wait out.  Well let me tell you, I can’t wait for it to get out!  Jakob woke up last Wed with 102 fever.  It seemed gone Thursday morning but was back before lunch, and in full swing by bedtime (even after a round of Tempra).  I brought the boys to the doctor on Friday to be checked- Jakob for the 48hrs of fever, and Henri ‘cus he had finished meds for an ear infection 1 week prior and was starting to be cranky and wake at night, and I wanted to make sure the infection hadn’t come back.  We saw the same doctor who had diagnosed Henri with the ear infection, and she said he might be coming down with the same thing Jakob had, and if either of them had fever in another 2 days to bring them back.  And that they are seeing a lot of this virus.  And that it was contagious as long as the fever was there.  We brought them home, and by bedtime Henri now also had 102 fever.

This meant that we had to do our New Years’ Eve plans in shifts so one of us could be home with the kids.  It was a little awkward, but it worked out in the end and both of us were able to see our friends, enjoy a great meal in good company, and then still be together in time for a midnight kiss.

They both still had fever this morning, so since it has been another 48 hrs I brought them back to the clinic.  Luckily we saw the same doctor again (I don’t know if she’s new so stuck on “emergency duty”, but she’s really sweet and great with the kids).  No ear infections, and their lungs sound good, so we still assume it’s the same virus.  If Jakob still has fever in 2 days, though, making it 6 days long, he’ll probably have to go for a chest xray to make sure there’s no pneumonia.  He’s not really coughing, but apparently a lingering fever is a symptom of pneumonia, even when you don’t hear anything in their chest with a stethoscope.

I’m going to pop in another disk of season 1 of Buffy and try to finish my KP pattern.  I’ve got the bulk of it done and even the finishing, but there are 2 little “bits” that I need to quickly sketch and knit, and then it is ready to photograph.  Nothing like starting off a new year clearing things off your plate!  (Let’s pretend for a moment that I don’t have a ton of OTHER things still on the plate).

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I forgot to mention that I got a photo of those dog sweaters being modeled:

I have no clue which dog is which, though I think Chopsy was the one with the narrower distance between front legs, so that would be Chopsy in the back and Tofu in front.


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first post of the year

Happy New Year! Anyone make any resolutions?

I will be trying something this year- sticking to “moderation”. I think limitations (like diets, yarn or otherwise) are set up to fail. They either have expiration dates, or set you up for a lifetime of sacrifice. With moderation, though, you can have it all. Just maybe smaller amounts of it.

In keeping with that faith I kept my knitting to moderation today. I didn’t stress about my late deadline project, nor get frustrated about taking on these challenged but then never having time to knit for myself. Instead I divvied up my time. I know I need to focus and make notes on my deadline project, but can knit stockinette with my eyes closed. So while my boys napped I made sure to spend the 3.5hrs working where I could pay attention, then at night catching up on Fringe with Yannick I was able to take 2 hrs and comfort knit. This way I got knitting done for myself AND for my project, and I don’t feel guilty or slighted.

And I made progress!

I’ve got 18 more repeats (36 more rows) to go before I divide for the arms and body on the Featherweight Cardigan.


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2010-12-29

Well I completely missed Christmas didn’t I? Merry
Christmas, and happy holidays to everyone who celebrates! I put our
tree up last week after Robyn’s son Quentin’s bris. It’s fiberoptic
and the boys like watching it change colors.

Took the kids to
Santa on Christmas eve day. Had a bit of excitement helping a mom
find her lost child, but it worked out in the end and the day was a
success- the mom found her kid, I got my yearly Santa photo, and
the boys got home in time for their naps. Now that Jakob’s old
enough to “get” the holidays, we were able to start some holiday
traditions. I bought a special cup and saucer set to leave out
cookies for Santa, and we watched Polar Express as a family, then
played a board game with Jakob before bed. – I got an update from
the guy I knit the dog sweaters for. The sweaters fit great but are
a touch long in the underbelly (the one measurement I forgot to ask
for) so I may need to undo the ribbing and shorten them.