Just Jordan

On Sunday night my stomach started to ache. I went to bed a bit afraid I was getting the flu, but typically in our house Calder is the first one to be sick and since he was completely well, I was hopeful. Just after midnight all hope was lost. I spent the night running to the bathroom. I am a puker and I puked approximately every hour until Boone got up for the day (7 times total - I solely wrote that number to garner sympathy). For the first time ever, I nursed Boone laying down. I was afraid if I had to sit up for any length of time I would be heading to the bathroom for puke #8. I spent all day yesterday on the couch moaning. Thankfully Hugh was able to be home, because I was useless. I am just starting to feel better today. I have had worse pukefests, but the day afters aren't nearly as bad as yesterday. Needless to say, blogging hasn't been a priority, but I have so much to write about! There were a few firsts this weekend. . . Calder sent his cousin to emerg for the fir...

Sleep training Boone is going well. I would say he is officially sleeping through the night, as it has been 5 nights in a row that he hasn't needed love to get him through to the morning. Unfortunately, on many of these mornings he has thought 5:30 am was wake-up time. One of these days we were able to get him back to sleep, but yesterday morning, we had no such luck. I was so pumped that when Hugh left this morning at 5:30 and Boone didn't wake up. That is until Calder decided to JUMP out of his bed and run down the hall at 6:00 am. I was HOT - for three reasons -  Calder has been told numerous times over the past 3 days not to jump off his bed. In fact, 2 days ago he did the exact same thing and woke Boone up from his nap. There was a time-out and talking to then, but apparently the point didn't stick. Calder has a clock that has a blue face and shows a moon when he is supposed to be asleep and then turns to a yellow sun when he can get up. We set his to get up at 8 ...

Kate and William named their baby boy George Alexander Louis (but I can't believe for a second that you hadn't heard that already :-). Congratulations to Wendy (my mom) and Katie! Making things easy for me, they both picked the Children's Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan. Hugh was very concerned that people weren't going to believe I actually made a donation! I am sure there is a way to actually capture a screen shot of the computer, but I had no clue. So I used my phone to take a picture! Thanks to everyone who played! It was fun :-)

Boone continues to brighten our days with his smile, giggle and happy demeanor. Boone only gets fussy if he is hungry or tired and since he sticks to a regular eating/sleeping schedule, it isn't hard to figure out what Boone needs. Although Boone (and I) loves his schedule, he is flexible when we need him to be. He can stay up a bit longer if we are out watching a ball game and will tolerate being woken up early from a nap when it is time to take Calder to swimming lessons. Boone only nurses for about 10 minutes during his daytime feeds. Between my fast milk and his fierce suck we waste no time. I give Boone a dream feed at night which can take longer (Boone goes to bed between 7 and 8 and I wake him before I go to bed to feed him one last time) By the end of the day I don't have as much milk and Boone is drowsy. This is by far my favorite feed with him. I get to sit in the dimly lit nursery holding a calm, relaxed, sleepy baby. So peaceful. During his awake time, Bo...

During my breastfeeding daytime television watching I am constantly bombarded with speculation about when the Royal Baby is going to arrive. Obviously the media is not going to give this girl any space, but I just get a kick out of hearing them saying, "Reports say TODAY is the due date" every second day! Link to original image I think it is pretty awesome that the British government changed its law of succession to state that sons and daughters have equal rights to the throne. This means that the baby in Kate's belly will one day sit on the throne. I thought it might be fun to get in on a bit of the Royal Baby fever and have a contest. If you can guess the correct name to the future heir, I will make a donation to the charity of your choice. My guess is Alexandra and I will be donating to NH research. And if no one gets it right I will just draw a name out of a hat! Please put your name and the charity of your choice in the comments section. If you are hav...

I had my best run so far last night. I jogged 4 km in 28:36. I had done 4 km before but recently I had been wimping out and walking for a bit in the middle of my runs. I say wimping out because before those runs I had pumped myself up to run the whole 4 km, but during the run I completely talked myself out of it. My pace for the runs I wimped out averaged about 6'40"/km. Today I ran at a pace of 7'07"/km. I felt much better the entire run. For right now, this is the pace I am going to try and stay at. I am really excited to run fast, but I need to be able to run 5 km first! I am going to run one more 4 km this week and next week I am going to move on to 4.25 km! Here are some pictures from a couple of my recent runs. I am using the Nike + app to track my progress. I like it because it interrupts my music when I have completed a kilometer and it tells me the speed at which I ran at the same time. The app also allows you to track your progress from run to ru...

Tuesday 9:25 pm Today was a day I thought about Tripp a lot. It started when I read THIS blog. It made me cry and wonder what Tripp would say to me if he could. I went into the city today. Alone. It was a treat to have time to think on my own. I heard songs on the radio that brought Tripp to my mind and tears to my eyes. I'm not even sure now what the songs were. I think it was maybe a day that I needed to have a cry and those songs gave me the freedom to release. I went shopping for a dress to wear to my brother's wedding in August. While I shopped I thought of the last time I attended a traditional wedding 2 years ago. I was nervous about seeing people and self conscious about how I looked. I was sporting my post-pregnancy body without my baby on my hip. This time I was much kinder with myself as I shopped. It helps that Boone is here and he will be on my hip at Luke's wedding. I went to a couple of stores looking for something that Boone could wear to the wedd...

I did a bit of playing around with my camera this weekend. I have a Pentax K-x and am using the lens that came with it (18-55). I have been wanting a lens that is good for portraits, but before I make the purchase I think its best if I start to learn more about my camera and its settings.  Hate the colour on this one, but love Calder's smile. I rarely catch him like this! I shot most of these in manual (which means I adjust the shutter speed, ISO, etc.). I like some, and others seem a bit blurry to me. I want to get better at using natural light rather than my flash. The colour is so much nicer. I took 214 shots. There are about 15 I like! Thank goodness for digital photography. I definitely wouldn't be able to afford to learn photography if I had to pay to have film developed! Happy Tuesday!

Calder is getting so big. And by big I mean all grown up! He has started to repeat phrases Hugh and I use like, "I'm not kidding". He has started inquiring more about what words mean. Yesterday he asked about "transfer", "clog", and "wound". The other day while we were eating cookies, Calder asked me, "Is that your tooth?" I had no clue what he was talking about so I asked for clarification. He said, "IS THAT YOUR TOOTH COOKIE?" Oh, my second cookie. No son, that was my third! He has continued to say tooth for second and I almos Calder hauling in weeds at the lake. I need a rake and gloves. He is such a boy! t don't want to correct him it is so cute! He has also started to interact in more meaningful ways with Boone. Up until now he would mostly just get as physically close to Boone as he possibly could and then try to manhandle his face. Calder has now started to mimic our behaviour with Boone. He uses the sa...

Do you struggle with garden hoses? I did and I struggled so much I actually dreaded watering my pots in the front. When our plants were near death and I finally mustered up the resolve to water water them, I couldn't even properly put our hose away. A few weeks ago I saw this hose advertised on TV. (Just noticed I took a picture of the French side. For those of you not fluent it is called Clear-Flow Garden Hose. I am too lazy to take another!) It is amazing! I can move it around with total ease. I love it! It comes in 25, 50, 75, and 100 foot lengths. I recommend getting the least amount of feet for your space as it has to be totally unwound to use. The hose is flat and water pressure expands it. This makes it incredibly light. On TV they advertise a 10 year warranty, so we are keeping the receipt!  We purchases this hose for our front and are waiting for more 50 ft hoses to come in to get one for our back. The only downside is that they are exclusive to Home Hardware, which might ...

We do an annual getaway with our friends Jordan and Danielle and their son Jack every year. This year  in spite of the flooding, we headed to Calgary with a stop in Drumheller! Calder and Jack in front of the World's Largest T-Rex! Can you see us up in the mouth?!? We hit the museum in Drumheller. It was SUPER busy. The boys didn't quite understand the concept of a museum. Instead of viewing the exhibits and soaking up information, the boys thought a museum was crowded race track.  Jordan, Danielle, and Jack  Calder and Hugh's best dino roar! Calder asked us all winter if we could stay in a hotel! He was super pumped that we spent two nights in two different hotels - both had water slides! (I'm not sure what Calder is doing here. I took about 20 photos of the boys laying on the bed and in most of them he is trying to pinch Boone!) There was some super hot weather in Calgary - above 30 degrees Celsius and closer to 35 degrees with the humidity...

Our recent getaway took weeks to organize (more on the actual trip when I get the photos downloaded). We went with friends so we had to coordinate schedules, plan a destination, book hotels, and pack. It is safe to say that in our house, I did ALL of the planning.  I baked muffins and cookies to take. I made grocery lists. I did laundry and gathered life jackets, found sunscreen and hats. I made Calder a road trip bag filled with goodies I purchased, found at the library and at our house. You might be thinking, "Yah, but you are on Maternity Leave and Hugh is working." You are absolutely correct, but trust me, had I been working it would have worked out the exact same way :-) Hugh is a great assistant, but when it comes to our lives, I am the CEO. I was able to send Hugh a grocery list late last week to save myself a trip to the city (He then subsequently ate all the fruit that night with Calder's help and had to go back :-). Hugh is also great at taking orders ...

We went on a 5 night holiday over the long weekend. I spent much of last week getting ready and we arrived home at supper last night. It has felt like I haven't had time to write, but I know that it is more about me not making time to write. If things are important, we make time for them. This blog is so important to me. I love it as therapy and a place where I can make connections with people, so I just need to bump it up on the priority list. Lately, I have chosen watching Master Chef or surfing Facebook over writing. As much as I like doing those mindless tasks, I feel so invigorated after writing - kind of like how I feel after running. Some days I have to give myself a pep talk to get my runners on . . . I am just going to have to do the same with writing. Sometimes it is hard to come up with things to write about, but on the way home from our trip I brainstormed almost a dozen ideas of things I want to write about, but have been too lazy to! Today I am going to start by a...