Not Funny

When Darcy was a baby, I'd talk to my friends who had baby boys and listen to them complain about how hard it was to find boys clothes. They'd rant about the endless shelves of pretty dresses while they were struggling to find outfits for their sons. I laughed because I loved those rows and rows of beautiful dresses.

I'm not laughing now.

It is so hard to find nice clothes for a baby boy, especially a newborn (and a small one at that!). Once he starts wearing 6 months-sized clothes it should be easier, but right now it's a nightmare. I wanted to get him something cute to wear for our family Christmas portrait and it was no easy task. H & M finally came to my rescue this afternoon with a cute little sweater vest and button-down shirt. He'll look very handsome when portrait time comes next week.

In the meantime a big boo-urns to the clothing retailers. Boys need clothes too!

Gymnaxtics

This fall we signed Darcy up for a 6-week gymnastics class which she called "Gymnaxtics". Like her mother, Darcy isn't the most co-ordinated young lady you're ever going to meet so we thought a round of gymnastics might help. We also thought that because she's not in day care right now she could use some structured time around other kids.

When Nick took her the first week we were a little surprised to find out that parents weren't allowed in the gym during the class. Apparently it is a little distracting to the kids. We were told we'd be welcome to watch on the last day.

So for the last few weeks we've been relying on Darcy's interpretation of what happened in class, which hasn't been all that reliable. We've been hearing about her "rolling like a pencil on the cheese", or she'll do a motorcycle jump and finish it off by raising her arms and yelling "vassay!". We had no idea what these things meant and we were interested to go this morning for parents' day to find out what it was all about.

Apparently "rolling like a pencil on the cheese" simply means rolling with a straight body down a wedge-shaped mat. Easy enough. "Vassay" (this one puzzled us the most) seems to be Darcy's translation of the word, "Present". When she kept saying it when we got home today we corrected her and told her she should be saying "present" she told me, "I'd rather call it 'vassay'." OK then.

All in all we thought it was a good confidence booster for her (although she did let several other kids cut in front of her in line for the trampoline) and I think it's helped her co-ordination a bit. We've signed her up to start the class again next week so we'll see how round two goes!

Rolling like a pencil on the cheese. This is apparently as straight as her body gets!

I Stand Corrected

I hope you're not getting bored with funny Darcy conversations, because here comes another one...

We went out to run some errands this afternoon and one of them was to pay off an outstanding balance we had at the dentist's office. We pulled into the parking lot and Darcy asked, "What are we doing here?" I told her I was just going to run inside for a minute to give them some money. I got out of the car and walked in, paid the bill and walked back. (On re-reading this I feel the need to clarify that Nick was waiting in the car with the kids!)

When I got back in the car I was greeted with, "Mommy, walking isn't running."

Pardon me.

Doctor Update

I took Wesley for his doctor's appointment this morning. All is good. He weighed 4.8 kg, which is roughly 10.5 lbs! He should be double his birth weight long before he's 3 months old. According to the charts, he should double his birth weight by six months, so he's a bit ahead of schedule there. Of course he didn't have quite as much to gain as a baby who started out at 8 lbs!

Of course the worst part of the appointment was the shots. Darcy only got one shot at two months but things have changed now and Wesley got two. One in each leg. He was screaming and shaking so badly after the first one, I don't know how the doctor managed to get the second one in. Oh well, at least that's over for a couple of months!

The thrush is still gone, so hopefully that's a thing of the past. It can come back, but I'm really hoping it won't.

All in all, our boy is doing great.

We're having more beautiful weather today, so we're celebrating by washing our windows. I can't get the smell of vinegar off my hands now. I love looking out clean windows!

To close, here's my favourite Darcy conversation from the weekend:

D: How come our pumpkin doesn't have a Jack-face on it yet?
Me: Because we haven't carved one on it yet.
D: Because it isn't Christmas yet?
Me: Because it isn't Halloween yet.
D: Halloween, yeah. For Christmas we're going to make a ginger ale house.
Me: Gingerbread honey.

Wow!

I've already written this post once and it disappeared. It's never as good the second time around....

We had a great weekend here. My cousin, Glenn, came to stay with us before running the Detroit Marathon this morning, which was, I believe, his fourth marathon. He had an amazing run this morning and blew his previous best time out of the water. You can read more about that here.

Also over the weekend I was looking for a recipe for caramel dipping sauce for apples. I put out a request on Facebook and got several responses. I decided to try the first one I got which came from my friend, Neesha. She knows a good thing when she sees it so I decided to try her suggestion. I chose wisely.

I made my first attempt on Friday night and it was a pathetic failure. I left the sugar on the heat a split second too long and it burned. Badly. It was awful. I tried it again tonight, did a couple of things differently and all I can say is, "Holy crap!" This stuff is amazing. I could eat it with a spoon. It's creamy, buttery, everything you're looking for in a caramel sauce. Amazing.

On a completely different note, Wesley is 2 months old today. That means he needs to go to the doctor for some shots tomorrow. Not fun. I am interested to see how much he weighs now and whether or not the thrush has come back. I'll have a full doctor's appointment update tomorrow.

Playing Chase

The main floor of our home seems to have a built in race track. You can go around in a loop between the entryway, living room, dining room and kitchen. Darcy loves running around and around and around and around...

Her favourite thing is if one of us is chasing her. She'll frequently say, "Let's play chase!" and begin running around the racetrack. Her big goal is to try to get past you.

This morning she was playing with Nick and he was running in front of her. She kept trying to get past him with no luck. Suddenly she said, "Daddy, wait for a minute." Nick dutifully stopped. When she got close to him she said, "I need to get past you." At this point she laughed like a maniac and blew right past him.

So it seems we've learned a valuable lesson in our house today: "If at first you don't succeed, cheat!"

Pictures

If you haven't seen them all yet, our vacation pictures are now up on our Flickr site.

And We're Back

Our vacation's over and we're settling back into life here in Windsor.

We had a great time visiting both sides of our family, and because we didn't have any pressing need to be back, we even extended our time in Montreal by a day.

Wesley did great with the traveling itself, but not with being away. He didn't sleep well, which meant Nick and I didn't sleep well either. He seemed to do better at home last night and so far has been awake most of the day today (he was sleeping all day in Montreal and staying awake a lot of the night). We're hopeful that he'll be back on track soon.

After our grocery shopping trip today we now have a lot of apples and a lot of strawberries. Does anyone have any recipes that could use them both?

I tried to add some pictures from our vacation to this post but the uploader was giving me trouble. I'll try adding some later. They'll be up on flickr soon.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Here we are in Montreal after a great Thanksgiving weekend in Cambridge. We celebrated my niece Laura`s 5th birthday, had a wonderful Haskell family dinner on Sunday and spent some time at Chudleigh`s farm (note to the wise, don`t do this on a 30 degree Thanksgiving day. It was far too hot and crowded, but still fun).

On Tuesday morning it was up bright and early for the drive to Montreal. We hit some traffic getting into Toronto, but the rest of the way was smooth sailing. There was a bit of rain while Nick was driving, but as soon as I started driving, it started to pour!

The kids did amazing on the drive. Darcy watched DVD`s the whole way and Wesley slept. He didn`t cry until we were in Montreal. What a little trooper. We were so pleased with how the drive went.

There was delicious spaghetti waiting for us when we got here. We loved it, but it clearly didn`t work when it passed through my milk into Wesley`s stomach. At 1:00 am he was still screaming and was incredibly "gassy". Nick and I didn`t get too much sleep last night. Hopefully tonight will be better.

Dilemma

First of all, hooray for Wesley! Last night was the first night we were only up once during the night. I could get used to that...

Now that Wesley is 6 weeks old I had my follow up appointment with my doctor this week. She said I'm fully recovered and that I can now get back to my regular exercise program.

Here's the question... What's my regular exercise program? Do I want to start running again? I never really enjoyed it but I did enjoy the feeling of accomplishment I got as I met my running goals. What about power walking? Will that be more enjoyable?

The other night while we were out shopping I saw an exercise ball with a DVD for exercises you do at home. With two young kids and winter approaching I can definitely see the advantages of being able to exercise at home. This said it was good for toning ab muscles which is a priority after giving birth, that's for sure.

Should it be some sort of nice combination of them all? I really don't know. Any thoughts?