tiffany's spot

Seriously, I'm thinking about going on writer's strike again. I've noticed that of my list of blogs I faithfully read and check 14 times a day that there is very little action. Also, very little commenting going on here in my spot. I honestly thought I'd get at least a comment or two on t he housekeeping post , but NOOOOO. I'm somewhat frustrated! Here I am pumping out gold, only to have it not be read! And to add insult to injury (or vice versa) nobody else is meeting any sort of blogger quota. Shame on you! I can practically hear the wind blow through the abandoned buildings and see the tumble weeds floating along with the dust. The internet is becoming a lonely place!

I was just checking out the baby ticker. It worries me (if you’re reading this on facebook you’ll have to link to the actual blog to find out what a “baby ticker” is. It’s that creepy thing on the left). It worries me that my baby is so creepy looking. Have you ever noticed it doesn’t actually move its limbs around? Doesn’t suck its thumb, doesn’t yawn or stretch at all. I wonder how it spins and moves so much while actually doing nothing to get itself going! But the biggest worry . . . It doesn’t look like either of us. Don’t tell Steven, maybe he won’t notice. But you’d think it would resemble at least one of its parents. Maybe it’s not even mine . . .

My house is stinky tonight. Okay, maybe not the house in its entirety, but there are definite offensive areas. My Kitchen Garbage . Apparently if you chuck a dirty diaper in there (and I mean one of "those" diapers that results in a lingering odour in every area the baby has visited since creating the offense) the entire kitchen will get this burst of rotten you-know-what smell every time it's opened. Not pretty. I suppose I could change it. My Washing Machine . I know what you're thinking - Nothing smells better than clean laundry ! Well, if you wash something, and then leave it in there for a couple of days all wet and soggy it starts to stink. I am guilty of this. Remember that time I went camping ? Still working on the laundry. You should see the basket in the kids' room. Mommy very very bad . There are cookie crumbs on my island . Not an actual island island with leis, sun and sand. Oh no, we can barely afford the chunk of land we live on, much less an islan...

Have I mentioned that being pregnant isn't my favorite thing in the world? Well it isn't. The ironic thing is that while counting down the days should be a happy thing (38 days to go is better than 50 of course), the closer you get to nine months, the worse pregnancy is! Bigger everyday, more heartburn everyday, more people making annoying comments. I've also been trying not to eat after supper. This is difficult on days like today when I really want to sit on the couch with my container of monster cookies. Oh yeah, want to know something else that is especially frustrating? Cookies cause heartburn. Not just a little, oh no. It's heartburn that can only be helped by 14 rolaids. Bring on baby.

Sorry Sonya, these were supposed to be brownies.

Remember how excited I was to go camping ? First of all, let's just say that I still love camping. I plan on taking the kids every summer, and hopefully when they get older we'll go for more than a couple of nights. Maybe we'll even have a camper. But this year had its challenges. I was actually going to write down the events of the weekend as they unfolded, knowing that these challenges would arise. I started, but only made it to the end of Friday. I'll point form my started list: Tuesday 6:00 - arrived at the camp site. Yay camping! 7:30 - "hey, let's go swimming!" Yay camping! We started to walk down to the swimmin' hole. Turns out it's about 18 miles to get down there. The kids didn't much want to ride in the wagon, but it's much faster, so we made them. Tennyson fell out of the wagon, pretty much taking care of that pesky skin on his chin. Blood everywhere. We decided against the shortcut because it was through very tall, mosquito i...

Steven's on midnights again. I know I've mentioned that I hate the midnights, especially his 3-day midnights weekend. However, it's been made better by a number of things - Angela and Heather have come over to watch movies the last two midnight Saturdays, and since Steven switched to a different shift, my mom is now off on his midnight weekend and she comes and entertains me for a day too! I love my people. Today is slackday. I was going to make cookies today, but I've decided that I simply don't feel like it. Mom came yesterday and we spent a couple of hours weeding a flowerbed. Seriously, I should have taken before and after pictures. The after picture is cute, if a little empty. The before picture looked like a wild grass field. The people who lived in the house planted a few blue flax plants. They are actually mildly cute, but they seed themselves EVERYWHERE. My entire flowerbed was overrun with them. This is a picture of blue flax (I ripped all mine out because...

My prior to-do list for tonight: clean up toys bath the kids sweep vacuum make meatballs for a camping trip next week clean my 3 bathrooms I've picked up the toys (mostly) and bathed the kids. They're now in bed. I'm now sitting grumpily at the computer wishing that more of my "blogs I read" people had blogged today so I'd have an excuse to sit here longer. Meatballs? The hamburger will be okay in the fridge for a day or two right? Sweep & Vacuum? Um - I may have to sweep the dining room, or else just accept the fact that Tennyson will be eating tonight's potatoes for breakfast in the morning. Bathrooms? I think I'll have to (sort of) clean the main one, because I took the shower curtain off already, and it's 27 degrees in here and I'm sweating to death and need a shower. Even I won't hang a dirty shower curtain back up once I've taken it off . . .

43 days to go. Why oh why are there still 43 days to go!?! I truly hate being pregnant. Then why do it? Because I love my babies. I really really do. I love (almost) everything about them! Being pregnant, however, really sucks. There are people who will tell you that they love being pregnant. These people are either nuts, or full of crap. No offense if you're one of them. I think people just really like the attention. Because there is lots of that: people touching you, people trying to lift your shirt up (exceptionally annoying), the constant "and how are you feeling" which is fine if it's someone who genuinely cares. Okay, the "how are you feeling" thing actually drives me nuts. If it's a real friend or someone who actually cares it's okay, but usually the conversation plays out something like this: other: And how are you feeling? me: Okay other: [staring at me in disbelief, waiting for me to spill the "true" story] me: Well, a little tir...

I'm taking the kids camping tomorrow. They will love being outside and swimming, and Jordan can't stop talking about the tent. I think she's just excited to "play tent" as it were. The only real concern I have is getting them both to fall asleep at night. However it all turns out, there shall be pictures and blog fodder in the next few days. My apologies for disappearing until Thursday night. Okay, seriously, no apologies, I'm going camping!

Okay, so maybe it's not after midnight. Unless you consider that 7:30am is technically after midnight. I went for a walk this morning. I didn't go my usual route because of the mosquitoes. Usually I walk outside of town because it's quiet and grassy and overall a nice route. The other day I went in the evening. Turns out I haven't been out since before the mosquitoes got really bad. I was walking along the highway and it wasn't too bad because I walk fairly quickly. Then I turned down the country road. I was only a few minutes in when I realized that I wouldn't be able to continue. The mosquitoes were literally swarming me. I could feel them in my hair, ears, bumping off my legs and arms. I turned around to head back to the highway and I actually had to run to lose the cloud. It was not fun, my stomach muscles ached for the rest of the evening. This morning I decided to stay in town. I figured I had gone pretty far, until I got home and checked it out on the goo...

The websites always recommend making a birth plan. I always thought it was a funny, hippyish thing to do. With Jordan I had an obstetrician, with Tennyson I had a midwife and with #3 here I'm having a family doctor here in Portage. If only I could find my granola . . . I'm doing it. I'm making a birth plan. People don't quite understand what the difference is when you have a midwife, especially when I tell them that you can still have a midwife and give birth in a hospital. There is a BIG difference. Many differences, actually. Here, I love listing things: The entire prenatal and birth experience is about you . Sure they are very concerned with the health of the baby and all that, but their focus is on mom. For instance, a doctor's appointment is about what? 15 minutes long? The nurse does everything and doc comes in at the end to poke around your belly for a minute and then buggers off. The midwife sets aside an entire hour for you. The weight, measurements and hea...

Okay guys, here it is. From L to R - Angela & Tiffany. I've always liked this picture, even though it was of me at my fattest. Maybe because it was of me and my best friend, and we were both actually smiling! Ange looking cute in her high school years. I couldn't resist. Sorry Jeff! Heeeere's Sonya! Sonya, I looked around and can't find a ton of pictures of you. I guess maybe I wasn't all camera happy back then. If only I could have predicted my future in blogging. I'm also thinking I might be missing an album. Don't worry - keeping an eye out for it!

I went for a walk tonight. I learned something from one of the local residents here - even if you have NOTHING to tie down something with (say, oh I don't know, a ladder), you can still transport it with your vehicle. All you have to do is lay it across the top of your car and stick your arm out the window and hold it down. Nope, no rope or tie downs needed. To think of all the time Steven and I have wasted by needlessly securing things into trailers and vehicles over the years. Just think of all the stuff we could hold down onto the top of our van once our kids are older and have longer arms!

I got more comments on the blog with all the pictures than I have in forever! My thoughts are that we should all put a picture or two (or 5) of ourselves on our blogs. Could be from Junior High, or High School. And we should try to find pictures that people wouldn't actually think is us now! Okay, everybody up for the challenge? Now - GO!

Okay, I'm going to get all non-personal with this one. Sorry guys! Have you heard about the 12-year old Quebec girl who took her dad to court? Turns out she had been on the internet looking at sites he had forbidden her from looking at. Not to mention that she had been posting inappropriate pictures of herself. So what does Dad do? He tells her that as punishment, she is not allowed to go on an end-of-year camping field-trip. Does she repent and apologize and take her punishment? No, instead she takes her father to court. The Quebec Superior Court to be exact, where the grounding was officially overturned. Have you also heard that there are people in the Canadian government right now that are trying to make spanking illegal (again)? Apparently they're likening it to assault. In my opinion, there is a huge difference between a smack on the bum and child abuse or assault. I personally do spank my kids. It's definitely not all the time, nor is it excessive. Also, laws like...

I took Candice's advice and chose to have people show word verification. As annoying as word verification is, it's way better than blogspam!

I've been a little worried that I lost my camera. We joined Steven's dad at the campground last weekend for a bluegrass weekend and I haven't had the camera since. I knew I had taken pictures just before we left, and figured I'd thrown the camera in the diaper bag. Aside: My diaper bag is a combination of purse/diaper bag/luggage/camera case/etc. It was not in the diaper bag when I got home. Not was it it in the van anywhere, in the cooler, in any of the snack boxes we had brought. I was getting a little worried. Even though part of me figured that Tennyson had probably tossed it down a vent as I was unpacking, there was this nagging concern that I had left it at the campground. Steven's dad hadn't found it there though, and when I called the campground office they told me that nothing had been turned in. Today I hunted in all the kids' favorite hiding places - vents, behind the couch, drawers in the kitchen, toy boxes, etc. but to no avail. Then it occurred...

My 10 year high school reunion is this weekend. I can't believe it - it's actually been 10 years already! The other thing I can't believe as I look back at some of these old prom/grad pictures is that I used to think I was way too unskinny! If only I could go back in time and tell my Self of 10 years ago to enjoy it, because I was only going to get bigger! My wish though, is that ten years from now I don't look back and wish I was this size again! lol. But seriously, our group had some great times in high school. It's too bad that we all sort of part ways afterward, not through anyone's fault, but I suppose that's just how life is right? I look forward to seeing everyone this weekend and doing a little reminiscing. And don't worry guys, as soon as I find my other photo album I'll put some of the more candid shots on here!

As a mommy, I need naps. Not naps for myself per say, but I need for my baby to nap. I complain at times that Tennyson still naps twice - once at 10am and once at 2pm. I don't even complain so much as make fun of him. Silly boy sleeps 11 - 12 hours a night, and then needs two naps during the day. I seriously can't believe he does this at this age. You might be thinking - Um, Tiffany, maybe you should just be a parent already and modify his schedule. I must confess that I have thought this myself! It's not that he lacks a schedule. His naps, food, bedtime, etc. are all very clockwork. There are times that I've tried to skip the morning nap, and oh-my-goodness! He is so grumpy. You can tell that it's 10 or 10:30 just by watching him flop around and stumble and whine about nothing. Then I look at the clock and realize just how fast the morning has gone by. As much as I think it would be easier to do errands and stuff if my baby wasn't napping half the day, I secre...

A couple of months ago, we finally bought our first minivan. It had to be done, even after teasing our beloved friends for having bought a minivan themselves. To be honest, the minivan rocks! So much space! Anyone who has ever tried to load two kids, a stroller, a diaper bag, a playpen and x-number of groceries into a cavalier with know the joy I felt. Then, the van broke. In a big way. That’s my precious van in the picture above. I didn’t even have to fuzz out the license plate for the blog picture, because (among other things) it fell off. Back into the cavalier our little family went, but not for long because two days later I called MPI to find out how my claim was coming along and pressured the poor unsuspecting lady on the phone to please help me get into another vehicle soon due to the growing family in the shrinking car. I am pleased to say that exactly one week after the unfortunate van-breaking incident I was driving a new van. Aside: What's the deal with that caption any...

Tonight was Grandpa Q's birthday. I was going to bring my camera and attach a picture as Sonya so often does, but I can't find my camera. So much for that! Even though I was tired and grumpy, I looked forward to going to my grandparents' for the day. They are so warm and welcoming, and I always feel at home at their place. For anyone who doesn't know, my younger living-at-home years involved a lot of drama and unhappy times. I'm not saying that people didn't love me or anything, but there was lots of bad stuff too. Sometimes my grandparents talk of moving into something smaller, or into the neighboring city. I know that this is something people do when they retire and it makes sense, but it makes me sad too! Sad in a happy way I suppose. They have lived in that house for as long as I can remember (now I'm tearing up just writing this!), and so many of the positive times in my life have been there. I remember playing house, animals and "umbrella girls...

Seriously, I am. I'll be the first to admit it, I am in the worst mood this morning. I'd like to attribute it to lack of sleep. I went to bed just after 11 last night, which usually works because I get to sleep until 7 or so. Except that Jordan decided to get up at 3 o'clock and then kept messing around and leaving her room until 4. I didn't fall back asleep until 6, and was up again before 8. Not very nice. This morning I have no patience. I feel bad, because the kids aren't doing anything they don't always do, but I just have no patience for anything, so they keep getting in trouble for stuff. They probably think mommy is crazy right about now, and perhaps I am.