Weekend Stuff

The weekends always seem to fly by!

Since the weekend is the only time that I seem to sleep well, I'm really sad whenever Sunday night rolls around and I realize that I'll have to get up at 6am tomorrow while it's pitch black outside.  Although now that we've gone through another time change (I really, really, really hate time change.), it might actually be light outside by the time I leave the house in the morning.  When you drive to work, it doesn't really matter if it's light or not, but when you wait for a bus on the side of the road every morning it matters.  It matters because cars can't see you very well.  This doesn't usually make me feel safe at all.  Thankfully, once December 21st, the winter solstice, is passed the days will start to get longer and somewhere in January it's no longer going to be dark once I leave for work.

Anyways, the weekend I hit up the annual toy sale we have here.  A friend of mine wanted to go and asked if I wanted to tag along.  I didn't think I'd really find anything I needed there since my two nephews have decided that what they want for Christmas is a laptop or an iPod Touch.  Have I mentioned that they're 8 and 5?  So I have no idea what to buy them for Christmas, but it definitely won't be a laptop.  My nieces on the other hand are 16 and 9.  The 16 year old obviously no longer wants toys and since she's a girl I generally just ask her what she wants to give her gift cards.  The younger one lives in Australia and since mailing stuff to Australia takes about 2 months when it's larger than a letter I no longer send her actual presents.  So, I was surprised when I ended up finding all these great baby books in French and English for the baby.  Dre and I love reading and it's a passion that we hope to pass on to our kids.  I love movies and television, but I think that the written word is the ultimate way to convey a story.  There are so many details in a book that you can never get from a movie or TV. 

These were insanely cheap because it was the toy sale. 
Love it that 12 baby books cost less than $20.

When I got back home, I had these good intentions to have lunch and then go out for some errands.  Instead I fell asleep for 2 hours!  I guess what they say about the crazy sleepiness coming back in the 3rd trimester is true.  I'm not quite in the 3rd trimester yet, but I'm definitely more tired than I was a month ago.  We did make it to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner and to check out some video cameras.  The sales person at Future Shop basically told us that if we were looking at the Flip HD Camcorder or the Sony Bloggie Touch Camcorder that we'd basically have the same video quality from recording on our iPhones.  She recommended we go with an actual video camera.  I'm not sure I want to spend $300-$400 on a camera that I'm not sure we really need.  I think we'll look at them when we go visit my aunt in the States.  Electronics tend to be much cheaper over there.

This was what we got done on Saturday.  It was a good Saturday.  Sunday we did a ton of stuff, but I'll have to talk about that later.  My computer is dying over here so I need to go.

Need to Get Moving

Apparently we don't need prompts to write well during the weekend.  Haha! 

The weekend is when I have no time to write and when I do remember to write I just have no idea what to write about.

With all the baby stuff that runs through my head at any given time, I have a hard time figuring out what to write about let alone remember to actually go write about it.  I need to start carrying post it notes with me to remind me what I'm supposed to be doing.

Looking at all the progress that other Moms to be are making on their baby's room, I've realized that I need to get my butt in gear.  I have a picture of what I want to room to look like, but I haven't done much to get it done.  I think part of the problem is that IKEA seems to be incapable of stocking our stupid crib.  I mean how hard is it to stock cribs that you have in your catalogue so that people can buy them?  Dre called them and they have no idea when they're going to stock them...blah, blah, blah.  The thing is that we don't really need a crib to finish the baby room since we'll have him in our room in a bassinet for the first few months.  It just seems as if the room would come together more easily if we could build it around the crib.  Since IKEA is opening its brand-new and huge store in December in our city, I'm hoping that they'll have all these cribs in stock at that time.  We're hoping!

So my project for this week is to find the wall decals I need for the baby's room.  I want to get a huge tree wall decal and some monkey wall decals.  I'm hoping I can hang a few monkeys from the tree and really tie the tree into the monkey theme that Dre loves.  Then I need to take pics of a few things left over from my wedding and list them on Kijiji (like Craiglist for the US) to sell.

Hopefully, I'll have some awesome baby room pictures to post on here in the next month or so.

Keeping your Shopping Cart can be a Full Time Job and Why I Lurve Pens

Yesterday, I went to Costco with my SIL.  I love Costco because it is awesome and they always have new stuff on their shelves.  They’ve started stocking their Christmas stuff and Christmas gift ideas.  So there are about 200 different television series on DVD or Blu-Ray over there and about 100 different books that I wish I could have bought.  The problem is that I only read books once so if I buy them then they spend a long time on my shelves doing nothing.  

If you’ve ever been to Costco, you know how massively huge the shopping carts are there.  It’s like driving a tank down the different aisles.  The aisles around the store are wide so that’s not really a problem, but the aisles in the middle of the store are tiny and packed with annoying people who just randomly stop everywhere.  So trying to ram your cart through the clothing or DVD aisles to see if there’s anything you want is not fun.  

When we started shopping there, SIL and I noticed this and decided that we’d just abandon our carts at the end of an aisle and go wander around the middle.  Then we come back and retrieve our carts and go on our merry way without having tried to kill anyone with a shopping cart.  Anyways, I don’t look good in plaid jail pajamas.  So the point is that yesterday, we left our carts and went to wander.  As we’re making our way back to the carts, 2 sales ladies are discussing our carts and all the food we have in there.  They think they’ve been abandoned and that they should return the food to the freezers.  Pregnancy hormones appeared and I told them to keep away from my cart.  I mean I picked up all this stuff there’s no way in hell that I want to go around the store again and do it all over a second time.  I was a feeling a little testy because this random dude tried to steal our carts in the food court earlier.   Don’t mess with the pregnant lady’s cart full of food unless you want to be seriously injured!

It was a rather eventful evening last night.

Question of the day

When writing do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?

I’ve always loved pens.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve hoarded pens.  If you go through the drawers at my house, you’ll find hundreds of different pens and I love them all.  I can never have too many pens.  The pen aisles at the office supply stores are so awesome.

I especially love gel ink pens.  When gel pens came out in my early teen years, I thought they were the coolest things ever.  I mean you can write on black paper with them…hello…so cool!  Now I hunt for those pens that write like gel pens in more professional colors.  Blue and black are so boring sometimes, but the corporate clients might be shocked if I started signing the contracts and expenses in hot pink or neon green. 

When I was in university, I used a different colored pen for every class.  If I forgot that pen for some reason, I would get back to my place and re-write my class notes in the proper color of ink.  Yah, OCD much? 

So I love writing with pens, but I most often write on a computer.  Why?  It’s easy and fast.  I don’t have the time to write something on paper and then type it up on a computer.  It’s much easier to just type what I want to say on a computer screen and revise it as I go along.  I still love writing, but writing on paper takes much longer than typing those words.  Even though my preferred method to write is now a computer, I will never stop collecting and keeping every single pen I find.  They’re magical!

Lyrics Don't Inspire Me, Music Does

Dre and I didn’t do much last night.  We stayed home and made dinner.  While I was sitting on the couch after dinner 2 boxes of candy were within arm reach and I quickly realized that when I can touch the candy I’m going to eat the candy.  So I had to go hide the boxes away.  Dre thinks I’m hiding the candy from him…that is partially true, but the real reason is that I’m hiding the candy from me this time!

Today’s question is…

Can you listen to music and write?  What song did you hear today?

I can listen to music and write.  Mostly it’s because I tend to listen to the music and not the words of a song. My friends tell me that they hate specific songs all the time and when I ask them why they always refer to the lyrics.  I, then, try to remember the lyrics and I usually can’t unless it’s the chorus lines.  I’m weird like that…I could care less what a singer actually sings usually as long as the music sounds good.  Of course, there are some songs that I love because of what the words say such as “Come What May” from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.  It was the song we played for Dre and I’s first dance at our wedding almost 3 year ago.

In similar fashion, asking me to remember what song I heard on the radio while driving to the park and ride to take the bus this morning is useless.  I have no freaking idea!  There was music and I liked it, but apart from that I have no clue.  I would make a very bad musician or music industry person.

The perfect meal...or not

At first I thought that there was no way that I’d actually blog about the questions, but now I’m thinking that it could be interesting.

Here is today’s question.

If you know that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?

If I knew that this was the last food I would ever eat, I would probably organize a feast.  Why? Because I love food!  I’m trying to come up with a meal, but all I can think about is that I’ll never taste anything else again so I must eat everything.

Things like homemade spaghetti, creamy broccoli cheese soup, ravioli bake with lots of stringy cheese, spicy queso, loaded fajitas, pulled pork, braised beef, heavenly BBQ potatoes, T-bone steak, pizza with bacon and green olives, butter chicken, pho, spring rolls, lasagna, brownies, chocolate cake, cheesecake, heavenly chocolate chip cookies, salads heaped with feta, olives, and avocadoes, and the list goes on and on.

You see my dilemma.  I can’t just pick one meal and make that the last thing you’ll ever get to eat.  I think that’s why I like to enjoy my meals as if it is the last time that I’ll eat this meal.  It makes me enjoy and appreciate the food that I have a lot more.

Moving on to what I’ve been up to in the last 24 hrs.

I started the second part of my pre-natal yoga class yesterday.  It was so hard!  We did all of this balancing stuff which is a great workout, but my friend and I (we’re both at 25 weeks) were dying laughing because we couldn’t do some of the stretches comfortably anymore.  I guess the baby is taking a lot more room than we figured.  Also, we look like very ungraceful and uncoordinated ladies doing all of these graceful yoga moves.  Our instructor is tiny and super graceful which makes us look even worse.  Haha!  We find this hilarious.  Also, we’re really liking the fact that these yoga exercises and relaxing techniques are making us sleep so much better.  Last night, I slept until 5am before I woke up to go pee.  It’s a miracle!  I’ve started getting up 2-4 times per night lately and I always feel like I barely get any sleep, but last night I didn’t even move and slept like a log.  It was great!

Dre and I take the same bus home on most nights.  On the bus, he unzips his backpack and shows me what’s in it.  Guess what it is!  Candy.  Lots of candy!  After a holiday, we usually go to the store together and get some on sale candy.  This time Dre decided to go to the store on his lunch break instead of going with me after work.  Apparently the rows upon rows of discounted Halloween candy proved too much for Dre to resist because he bought 2 boxes of chocolate (90+ pieces), 1 box of chewy candies (90+ piece), and 1 bag of rockets (110 pieces).  It’s dangerous to let my husband go shop for candy all by himself.  Now we have enough candy to last us till next Halloween…but know Dre they won’t make it past ChristmasJ

Life is always interesting!

Joining in the NaBloPoMo!

Apparently today is the beginning of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo…say that 5 times quickly).  

In past years, every time November rolled around at least one blog I was reading decided to participate. And every year I wondered why someone would drive themselves crazy trying to post once a day to meet this imaginary goal.  I guess that I kind of get it this year.

In the past few months, I’ve found that I don’t have that much to say on here apart from detailing how the pregnancy is going (or trying to kill me depending on how you look at it).  When we do something, I try to write about it and find a couple of pictures to add to the story, but really how often do people want to read about me grocery shopping or changing my mind about the crib bedding set…AGAIN.

The idea behind NaBloPoMo (this is going to get really annoying to write…I can tell) is to blog every day which will improve your writing, and grow your blog.  I don’t know about growing my blog, but I could use some help improving my writing.  

When I was in high school, my favourite subject was English.  I love the grammar rules that always applied to the written word and I was quite good at following those rules when writing.  I kept that going through all my university years.  Now that I’ve been out of school for the last 5.5 years, I find that those grammar rules are hazier and that I can’t quite recall certain rules on how to structure my sentences.  I end up arguing with the damn Microsoft Word Grammar checker thingy every time (that thing makes up grammar rules). 

I figure that trying to write every day for 30 days can’t kill me and if I succeed the worse that can happen is that I have 30 boring posts.

The question asked on the official NaBloPoMo website for today is “What is your favourite part about writing?”  I guess the answer for me is that this acts kind of like my online journal.  It’s something that I’ll be able to look back at and read in a few months, years, or decades and recall all the trivial little things that we forget as life happens.  I’m not the best at telling a story, but I hope that my writing can inspire someone to start a blog of their own just as other bloggers out there inspired me to take the plunge and start writing down my story.

So wish me luck as this is my first official post of NaBloPoMo

Week 25

Here I am in Week 25.  Months ago I thought I’d never reach this date (I’m sure I’ll say this again at some point).  This pregnancy has been surprising in many ways and it hasn’t been too hard (comparing to a lot of what my fellow bumpies on the Bump are going through).

Our car seat is finally in!  Woohoo!  We picked it up last week and now it’s sitting in the living room.  I asked Dre what we should do with it for now because I was thinking of moving it to the baby room or into the basement.  He wants to leave it where it is; he says it accessorizes our house wellJ  He’s cute. 

Chicco Keyfit in Fuego
So cute!

We had a really packed weekend this weekend.  I really wanted to go see a movie this weekend so I could indulge in my obsession over popcorn, but we didn’t have time.  We did end up going to one of our friend’s Halloween party on Saturday night (costumes required) which was a ton of fun.  Dre dressed as an Emo kid.  He let me straighten his hair and then spike it into a Mohawk.  He even let me put black nail polish on him…it was a big hit with everyone who saw it.  I was also going to put eyeliner on him, but it wouldn’t stay on and every time he blinked he looked like he’d been mugged so we washed that off.  I went as a trashy bride.  It was awesome!  I always wanted to re-wear my wedding veil so this was a great occasion.  I just pinned up the back since it’s knee length.  Here’s what we looked like…

At some point, I'll stop being so paranoid and actually post a picture of our faces.  For now, you get black bars!

Since today is Halloween, we have to rush home after work so we can be ready to give out candy when the kids start coming around.  Some of them start coming really early!  My family didn’t celebrate Halloween when I was a kid, but since I started dating Andre I’ve started dressing up for it because we’ve been invited to a costume party every year and we hand out candy.  I think that whatever people say about the roots of this “holiday” being evil, I’m going to eat my weight in chocolate today because after that I have to be good so I can go take that stupid Gestational Diabetes test this weekend.  I personally think that it’s just a fun holiday where we get to be kids again and dress up.   Since almost all of our Christian holidays have pagan roots which is a fact that a lot of people ignore, I don’t think that celebrating it is a very big deal.  I know a lot of people would disagree with me, but I think that if I decide not to celebrate Halloween because of what the day meant back in the old days then I should also choose not to celebrate Christmas since it was a pagan holiday before the Christians adopted it and made it Christmas. 

Week 24

Week 25

A few people online have mentioned the fact that when you’re pregnant you tend to have a couple of months of big weight gain.  I didn’t know that and I’m glad to know that I probably won’t be putting on almost 2 lbs every week until the baby gets here.  This week my average weight is 167.9 lbs which is a 0.8 lbs gain.  In total, I’m up 14.9 lbs so far in this pregnancy.  It’s not bad at all when you think of the number, but when you see your scale flash 170 lbs at you in the morning it kind of whacks in the head with that number.  I’m like, “WTF is 170?   Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  I’m a whale!”  Then I see tons of lovely pictures taken at the Halloween Party which make me look like a blimp and I have to wonder if it’s the clothes I was wearing, the camera adding pounds, or do I just see a skinnier person when I look in the mirror because I definitely don’t see myself as that big already.  So for now, I’ll just keep going on with my random freak outs over the weight…it’s not like they’re stopping me from reaching for the Reese’s Peanut Butter cups!

The heartburn is a lot better.  When I saw the doctor last week, she gave me a prescription of Zantac that I can take as needed.  The funny thing is that Zantac is most effective when taken before you eat.  It’s hard to play psychic and figure out that you’ll get heartburn before it happens.  I’m glad I have the Zantac though since I can it if the heartburn gets really bad again.  14 weeks to go and then I can eat peanut butter and cinnamon once again!

Baby is still pretty active.  Some of the books/websites claim that the baby is now moving approximately 30 times per hour.  Yah right!  Mine is way quieter than that and I’m glad because he would seriously drive me bonkers if he moved that much.  It might just be that the baby is moving that much, but that I can’t really feel him if he’s kicking towards the inside. 

I’ve had a few BH this week and they’ve been accompanied my cramps which is great!  A lot of women say that BH never hurt, but I guess I’m in the few lucky ones that get slightly crampy, uncomfortable ones every so often.  No other stretch marks have shown up this week!  Victory!  I plan on keeping my solitary stretch mark all alone.  Of course that means I have to lube myself up with body butter and bio oil every time I think about it. 

By the way when I mentioned my sciatic nerve to the doctor, she told me there wasn’t really anything they could do about that.  Blah!  I figured that would be the answer so now I’m trying to do my yoga stretching every night to stretch the sciatic nerve and to keep away the stupid leg cramps that make me limp for 2 days that I tend to get.

I’m really looking forward to eating all that candy tonight, going to yoga tomorrow night, and then to Costco on Wednesday night (mainly because I get to look at all the awesome Christmas stuff that’s on display already…I LOVE Christmas).  Busy week, but it should be a fun one!

Baby is the size of an eggplant this week.  He’s getting pretty big!  I can tell because everyone at work feels the need to tell me how much bigger I’m getting EVERY SINGLE DAY!  It’s getting old…I wonder what they’ll have to say when I’m 9 months along…bahahahahaha!