Kicks and Giggles

Currently, Chloe has another cold.  However, having learned from last time, it is not going as bad.  I have some vitamin C drops that I have been giving her (Actually A, C and D as I can’t find vit C separately).  I would give her some apple or orange juice, but she doesn’t like juice for some reason, which I find really weird.  I thought all kids liked juice.  Also, as soon as she started with the coughing and stuffiness that hinders breathing, I broke out the Baby Vicks.  It is my favourite item for her colds.  I put it on her back, chest and feet.  (I know the feet sound weird but numerous people have suggested it and it actually works!)  While she is still coughing in the night and still wakes up with her hair crusted to her nose with snot (nice image, eh?) she is sleeping pretty much all night.  Last time, I remember being up with her for an hour at a time rocking her to sleep while she leaned upright on my chest so she could breathe.  This was only in early December, so it wasn’t that long ago either.  The Baby Vicks is not as strong as regular Vicks and also has lavender, chamomile and a few other things in it to help her sleep.  If your baby is over three months and has a cold, I highly recommend it!  Hopefully her cold goes away soon, but at least I am not losing the sleep that I was with the last cold.

On another note, my kitchen is still not done.  I am getting so sick of eating microwaved food and frozen pizzas and store bought casseroles.  There is not a huge variety and I feel like I have been eating horribly, which is not good for me or the little man that is growing in my belly.  I don’t have any pots or even a cupboard to work on and my sink is so small that I can barely fit three of four cups in it.  It is getting frustrating.  Hopefully it will be done within the next week or so and I can get my house and life back to normal.  As frustrating as this is now, I know that it will all be worth it once the cupboards are in and my kitchen is done!

Here is me at 20 weeks pregnant.  I feel like I am enormous!  And I still have another 20 weeks to go!  Eek!

And here is Chloe!  Happy and back to normal!  And getting so big.  If you look really closely, you can actually see her top two teeth that came in about a week and a half ago.

Brian and I have the most difficult time coming up with names.  The majority of the names I like, he hates and vice versa.  For Chloe it was easy as we both loved it from the beginning.  I don’t think we even debated other names and had decided on it pretty much from the day we found out she was a girl.  With this one however, we are having the most difficulty.  I made a list of names I liked and he wrote his opinions beside them.  A few of them he left alone, but other had comments beside them like “over my dead body” and “baby walrus”.  For me a name is very important and I have a few requirements.  I do not like unisex names.  I want people to look at my child’s name and know whether my child is a boy or girl, in this case, a boy.  In my opinion, a boy’s name should be strong and have a good strong meaning.  Chloe’s name means blossoming or verdant bloom, depending on where you look.  In my opinion, not a good meaning for a boy name.  It also shouldn’t mean something like baby walrus.  I know some people don’t care about meaning and don’t have any idea what their child’s name means, but for me it is important.  I also don’t want rhyming names like Jack Black or if it was a girl, Zoe (Zoe and Chloe).  I also don’t want a J name because I don’t want my son to be called J.J.  I am aware that some people like that and would choose to do it that way, but I do not.  I also don’t like names that have oodles of nicknames unless I like every single one.  For example, Chloe’s middle name is Elizabeth, which has about 400 different nicknames that go with it.  I do not like about half of them, therefore, while I love the name, it could never be a first name for me.  As hard as you try, you will not necessarily be able to keep your child from nicknames that you don’t like.  This policy alone vetoed a lot of names for me.  Due to tradition, he also has to have two middle names.  All the guys in Brian’s family have two middle names.  I like that tradition.  It gives me more names to say when he is in a lot of trouble!  I do have a few names and still quite a bit of time, but this child has to live with this name for his entire life, so it needs to be a good one.  It is a huge responsibility, naming a child.  While his name won’t make or break him, it is important and can have connotations on his life, especially if we end up naming him “baby walrus”.

This has been my day.

Then we had this for 5-10 minutes while she ate her cheese and shortly after.

And then more of this

Currently she is sleeping and I count myself lucky that she still has two naps a day.  If this continues after her nap, I may just go hide in the closet till it’s over.

(I am now hearing little whimpers over the baby monitor.  She better not be done napping.  It has only been 20 minutes)

Slowly but surely, Chloe has learned what no means and if we say it she will now cry a little bit and then leave the stereo alone and go play somewhere else.  Recently, however, she has also learned that shaking your head is associated with no.  So now when we say no, she looks at us and starts shaking her head while she smiles.  It is so hard to keep a straight face, watching that little head shake back and forth.  It is so cute. 

Sadly, our warm weather is coming to an end.  Today is still going to be above zero (4) but tomorrow, we have a high of a balmy minus 18.  I think I will stay inside.

Here is a picture of Chloe and her 4 dollar toy box, because it has been a while.  She’s 10 months old already!  How does time go so fast??

We are redoing our kitchen.  I am so excited.  Our house was build in 1978 and still had the original cupboards.  They were in pretty bad shape, and like most home decor from the 70’s pretty ugly.  In December, we ordered new cupboards, a new dishwasher and an over the range microwave fan.  The cupboards came on Thursday.  They were unloaded by 8:15 and Brian spent the next hour or so unpacking them.  The kitchen has been entirely emptied.  All my dishes, pots, and appliances are buried behind the new cupboards.  I have access to a toaster, the microwave and the oven.  We are living off stuff that can be baked without pans (frozen pizzas and the like) and stuff that can be microwaves (canned soups and pasta) as well as the occasional meal out.  Last night we went to BP’s so I could have a salad.  Tonight Brian is taking the piping out of the sink area, so I will be without a sink or water in the kitchen.  I am going to fill some jugs with water and put them in the fridge and I am going to make all Chloe’s bottles (a total of 6) which will last me three days.  Something tells me I will not have my kitchen back by then, so I will have to wash bottles and Chloe’s dishes in our teeny tiny bathroom sink.  We are using paper dishes since ours would not even fit in the bathroom sink.  While it is quite inconvienent for the time being, and a lot of work (mostly for Brian), I am very excited about it.  It will look so nice and maybe I will actually have some motivation to keep the kitchen sparkling!  Or maybe I am just using the gross cupboards as an excuse.  (Highly likely).

I was also going to post a couple pics of Chloe because it has been a while, but they are having problems uploading, so maybe another day.

Also, it was plus 14 yesterday, and is supposed to hit that again today!!  If you are sick of your cold weather wherever you are, feel free to come visit!

Just to make all you folk from Saskatchewan jealous, it is currently plus 5 degrees here.  It is supposed to hit 7 Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  I wore just a sweater when Chloe and I went out this morning.  As previously stated in the title, I love Chinooks!

Also, I am unable to get the picture posted on here.  I was however able to upload the video onto facebook, so feel free to check there.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=61361961410&saved#/video/video.php?v=61361961410

Boy!!  We are very excited.  The tech saw the “boy parts” as she called them numerous times.  Also, how do you get your pics for free??  Make friends with the tech.  She game me the disc free of charge when it was supposed to cost $20.  Yay.  I would post some pics, but it is actually a 4D video and I am having trouble getting some still frames right now.  If I can get it figured out soon, I will post some pics.  For now, I am going to go buy some blue.  I was already at the consignment store today!!

On Wednesday,  I went into the city.  A couple of the stores were having white sales and having decided that I was going to put Chloe straight into a twin bed, I decided that I needed to buy her sheets.  Since I am buying sheets, I might as well do it when they are on sale.  Anyway, we have to build her room from scratch so I am able to pick anything I want for her room.  After much deliberation and consideration, I chose to do her room in a Tinkerbell theme.  I am really excited.  I found a sheet set on sale and a calendar that I am going to turn into nice pictures.  I may get my sister to help with that, as she did a great job with the nursery ones.  I found a self-stick tinkerbell border at Home Depot and picked some colours from the Disney Colours selection of Behr paints.  I sent the sheets and paint swatches home to Brian’s mom and she is going to make Chloe a quilt.  She makes beautiful quilts.  I am very excited about it.  We are not building it until March, so I will not have pictures for quite a while, but when I do, I will post some.

Also, I find out tomorrow around noon Alberta time, so last chance for guesses!!

12 Degrees.  That is the temperature that it was in my house this morning when we woke up.  We are redoing the kitchen so we needed to paint.  I am doing the same colour in the kitchen as the dining/living room, which is nice because the dining/living room needed some touch ups.  One of the areas that needed touching up was around the thermostat.  We replaced it after we had painted and the new one was a different shape than the old one so we had a spot that was left unpainted underneath.  In order to paint this area, the thermostat had to be taken off.  It was not put back on and therefore the furnace has not been running since around 6:00 last night.  This resulted in a 12 degree temperature in our house.  Needless to say, it was cold.  Only one other time has it been this cold.  We had company and they flicked a switch on the furnace, thinking it closed the vent in their room.  It did not do this.  Instead it turned the furnace off.  That morning we woke up to a temperature of 11 degrees.  It was also quite cold.

Today, I have another doctor’s appointment.  On my way, I will be stopping to pick up a prize that I won.  Every week, one of our local papers runs a contest.  I filled them out in November because I liked the prize that you would win.  Because I hadn’t heard anything, I thought somebody else won.  Yesterday, I got a phone call that told me that I won.  It is 2 gift certificates.  One of them is to a local Chinese restaurant and the other is to the local children’s consignment store (where I spend way too much money).  Anyway.  I am very excited about these prizes.  We will have to use the gift certificate in the middle of our kitchen renos, when it is impossible to actually cook.