Kicks and Giggles

I am officially in Regina.  After what was the longest drive of my life (and I have driven 18 hours in one day more than once), we arrived around 4:30.  Chloe was exhausted as she had had about 3 25 minute naps on the way up and had woken up at 5:30 in the morning.  Normally I would have made her go back to bed, but because I wanted to leave right away, I let her get up.  Her sleeping is getting all screwed up, but hopefully we can get it back on track.  She had good naps today, so we will see. 

Last night was Christy’s stagette.  I would post pictures, but the computer that I am on is my parents basement computer and it is older than Moses.  It would probably take me until Tuesday to get the pictures uploaded, if it even has a place to connect the camera.  I think it is so old it does not even have a USB hookup.  To give you some idea, it has a diskette drive, and sits horizantally.  Anyway, it was quite a lot of fun.  It had been a while since I had gone out with the girls, and I had never gone out with my sister.  (weird hey?)  We had a great time.  I wish she lived closer, so we could go out more often.  I tried Mongolie Grill for the first time.  It was really good.  I hope we have one in Calgary.

Tomorrow we are going to get my dress sized.  We ordered it when I was 7 months pregnant so we had to guess at a size.  Fortunately, it does not need too many alterations.  This week will be very busy, as we prepare for the wedding, but I am looking forward to it.  I will for sure post lots of pics when I get home. 

Chloe wore pigtails yesterday.  They were super cute.

Yesterday, as Chloe was eating before bed, she started choking.  I sat her up and hit her back twice and was about to go into back blows when she started coughing.  Milk came out her mouth and nose.  She was quite the mess and crying because she was scared, but she was ok.  Brian and I had just been talking about that at lunch and how my first aid will expire in October.  We both decided that it was something that I should keep up, just in case.  In October, I will probably recertify.  After that discussion I was thinking that first aid is something that everybody should take at least once.  Who knows when you might need it and where you will be.  What if you are the only one there or somewhere too far away to quickly receive medical aid.  Working at the daycare, the government paid for me to take it.  I almost think that First aid should be covered like health care and education.  It would make it much more accessible and probably help save lives.  Even though it is not covered, to me it is worth the money that it will cost and the weekend that it will take just to know that if Chloe had needed more than just a couple hits on the back and sitting up, I would have known what to do.

And a pic of Chloe, just because it has been a while

In about a week, all Alberta numbers will require ten-digit dialing.  For a few months now, this has been in the works and if you were to dial a number without the three extra digits, you would get a recording saying you needed to dial the area code first.  The 1 that is required when dialing long distance is not required, but the three digit area code it.  While I have heard people talking about this for a while, it has not been an issue for us.  For some unknown reason, our phones at home do not require the ten digit dialing.  I have no idea why, but I have yet to dial the area code on our home phone, and manage to make calls just fine, with no recording.  I told Brian that I thought it was because our phone still thought it was in Saskatchewan and so it automatically dialed the 403 in it’s phone brain.  (I don’t really believe this)  My reasoning for this is that when someone calls from Saskatchewan, the call display often does not have the 306 in front of the number, but when someone calls from Calgary or within the city, it has the 403 in front of it.  This has been happening since before the ten-digit dialing was started.  Maybe when they stop with the recording and it is just assumed that everyone knows and is required, my phone will start needing it, but for now, I am enjoying only hitting seven buttons (cause those extra three are so hard).

This weekend I am leaving for Regina for a week.  My little sister is getting married next Saturday.  It will be a long drive with a 5 1/2 month old all by myself.  I am a little concerned, as our last couple drives were not at all smooth and one of us needed to continually jump into the back seat and sit by her.  As I will be driving by myself, there will be nobody to jump into the back with Chloe.  I am pretty sure the lack of smoothness is caused by the thing I like to call the napping disaster.  In the past week she has had exactly four naps that were longer than 45 minutes, with the majority of them being less than 30 minutes!  She went from 2 1 1/2 hour naps to like 400 20 minute naps.  No idea what happened and no idea how to fix it.  I’ve been doing some reading and apparently this is quite common and they outgrow it around 7/8 months, but that doesn’t help as my drive is in 3 days.  I will be stopping in Swift Current for about an hour to visit my grandparents and let Chloe play on the floor for a bit.  Hopefully that helps.  I think part of the nap problem may be that we have just done too much for her little body to handle and easily adjust to.  First we went camping with my family, then Christy was visiting for a week, then we went to visit Brian’s family.  Now I am going down for Christy’s wedding.  Hopefully, once we get home and everything calms down, the napping problem will smooth itself out.  It would make things a whole lot easier.

Even though Brian somehow manages to get himself dressed properly, he can’t seem to figure out how to dress Chloe.  Here are some examples:

On an added note, it is finally cooling off!  I am able to comfortably stay upstairs and will actually be cooking something for supper instead of BBQing or having sandwiches or salad.  I’m thinking lasagna!

When I was younger I always wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid, but my mom wouldn’t get me one because she thought they were ugly.  A while back, this came up in conversation with my in-laws.  When we went back to the farm last weekend, my mother-in-law gave me this:

She found it at a garage sale in the states and brought it home for me!  I was very excited.

I always said that I would buy one for my daughter when I had one, but now you can only find the weird looking ones with the pink and blue streaks in their hair.  I want a normal one.  Granted, I haven’t looked very hard. I think many parents end up buying toys for their children that they really wanted as a kid and never had, for whatever reason.  What things did you want as a child, but never had?  Would you buy them now for yourself or your children if you could?

These last couple weeks Chloe has been starting to show an interest in what I am eating.  This weekend at the farm, it became obvious that she was interested in something a little more grown up.  She was consistently trying to grab stuff out of my hands or off my plate.  She tried to drink from my glass and also tried to grab for Brian’s moms yogurt, so yesterday I decided to let her try some.  I made the rice cereal, got her a nice big bib and sat her in her high chair.  I brought the spoon to her lips, she licked some off and broke out into the hugest smile.  She then reached for the spoon and shoved the whole thing in her mouth.  The spoon I had given her to distract from my spoon didn’t work so well, but that is okay.  A little mess never hurt anyone.  She absolutely loved it.  She also seems to be more willing to take formula from a cup, which is good as I am planning to wean her in about a month.  My little girl is getting so big!

This weekend we went to Brian’s parents farm to meet his sisters baby, Kaytlyn.  She is so small.  Next to her Chloe looks like a monster.  It is hard to believe that she was ever that small.  It was a good weekend, although Chloe decided that Saturday night at 2:00 would be a good time to talk as loud as possible for about an hour.  Not so fun.  Brian’s cousin Kelly, her daughter Laney and his Aunt Lynette were also up from the States.  It was a full house and very busy, but it was fun.  We also got together with some friends on Saturday night and had a shower for Terah and Kaytlyn on Saturday.  We had planned to go to the lake on Sunday, but we had quite the storm.  There was serious hail, which is not good when you are a farmer.  While it didn’t do any damage to the vehicles, it did do some damage to the crops.  Fortunately it did not wipe them all out and hopefully they are still able to get a decent harvest.  Here are some more pictures from the weekend.

Chloe helping Grandma play cards

Chloe wearing Grandma’s red “over 50″ hat

Grandpa’s Girls

Terah and Brian, Kaytlyn and Chloe

A Double 3 Generation Picture

We have returned from our camping trip, which went quite well.  Chloe slept through the night every night except the first night, although she did wake up quite early.  She had really good naps and managed to stay quite warm due to the fleece sleepers and numerous blankets.  We didn’t have great weather so we didn’t get to go to the beach, but at least I didn’t have to worry about sunscreen and whatnot.  It was also quite windy so I didn’t have to worry about bugs, although I did have to make sure she had a sweater and jacket on.  We went for a hike, which Chloe enjoyed in the Snugli with Grandma.  We had a group site, which is nice because there is nobody near  you, so we didn’t have drunken idiots all around us being overly loud at 2 in the morning, which is normal for a long weekend.  She loved watching the fire, just like her dad.  It went really well and I will not hesitate about taking her or any future children we may have camping.  Here are some pictures from the weekend.