~Playing Together~

I came around the corner to this on the weekend and had to get some pictures!

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Ethan and Tigger laying in the sun, playing together.  Ethan had his truck and Tiggs had his catnip toy!  It’s pretty funny that they are almost the same size, our cat is huge!!!  They just played, no fighting which is very weird for these two…

~A Post about a Big Brother...~

So I am working on getting Ethan to have better naps that do not require me to rock him to sleep. Basically I'm doing some sleep training. I don't have a book, just winging it based on stuff I've read online. Anyhow, I'm sure you know that it means that Ethan has been doing a little more crying that usual around here.

So today I put him down for his first nap of the day and he starts crying. I go to the kitchen and start emptying the dishwasher. After a couple of minutes I hear Tigger meowing. I go looking for him because he was driving me nuts and I wanted to tell him to shut up. I couldn't find him anywhere! Finally I walk by Ethans' room and he jumps down off of the nightstand next to Ethans' crib and comes towards me meowing. The whole time, Ethan is crying his head off. So I tell Tigger to be quiet and to get out of Ethans' room. I walk over to the crib and give Ethan a little reassurance that I'm still around and leave the room again. Ethan continues to cry. A bit hysterically actually. But I knew it was just for show. So Tigger walks into Ethans' room, plops down on the floor beside his crib, looks at the crib and then me, meowing the whole time! As if to say "Hello!!! Mother, baby Ethan needs you!!!" I grabbed the camera to get some pics and wished I had a video camera! He kept meowing until Ethan went to sleep and then he moved to the foot of the crib and laid down and kept one eye on Ethan while he had a nap.

By far the cutest thing I've seen him do in ages!!! Don't get me wrong, it's not the first time he's meowed when Ethan has cried. I just thought he was doing it before because it annoyed him...not because he was worried! So here are a couple of pics of 'Big Brother Tigger' trying to get me to go into Ethans room!

~Picture Post~

Ethan & Tigger have been hitting it off lately! Tigger is not as scared of him and seems to be accepting him into the family as you can see here!




He likes cuddling with Ethan (well somewhat, it is usually staged, LOL!) but he isn't all that thrilled when Ethan starts crying, as you can see in these pics!



Tigger loves to be underneath of things...it doesn't suprise me that this is what Randy caught him doing yesterday!


In case you missed it Ethan is Two Months old now! Here are his Two month pictures!




Finally, here is Ethan last night. After being up all day fussy and upset I finally stripped him down and he was as happy as a clam and fell promptly to sleep! He is his fathers son!


This is a Vision Board that I created this week. It includes some of my goals and dreams as I oontinue to proceed with my word of the year: Achieve. I wanted something that I could look at and remind myself as well as send out a message to the universe that this is what I want for my life! Not to mention I had a blast making it! It would seem that something would pop into my head like " Getting Married" then next page of the magazine I was flipping through had the word wedding on it! It happened a few times with the topics I had in mind. Creepy...

~Changes...~

Isn't it amazing how much you change as a person when you become a mother? I didn't think I would but WOW is all I can say! I find myself alot less selfish. Less selfish with my time for sure. I can sit on the floor and play with Ethan for hours, sit and stare at him, cuddle him at all hours...I'm definatly less selfish with my sleep too. Take today for example. I went to bed at midnight, woke up at 3:45am to feed Ethan and am now up cleaning house, making bottles, and surfing online. Not to say that I don't plan on going back to bed in a few minutes though. There is something I am now remembering I missed about 5am...it's so quiet and clean feeling outside, makes me want to go for a walk... That might become my summer tradition if I can get the guts to do it. Anyhow, back to the changes; I find myself being a better housekeeper. It's hard to say if it's out of having time to do it or if I just feel the need. But my house looks fairly great. It wouldn't be featured on the cover of Style magazine but it's looking good according to our standards. I find myself trying to be more organized. I always did like being organized but now I have my Epicure Spices organized by type, my tea and coffee seperated into their own shelves, a place in my kitchen designated for bottles...Weird. Lastly I find myself with alot of patience. I can't believe it. Well actually I can...it's the reason I waited so long to have kids. I knew that patience was not one of my strong points...it came with age and experience, LOL!

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will notice another change...my subject! But that's okay...he's a cute one! Anyhow, that's my introspective point of view for this morning! Now onto some fun pictures!!!

Look at how big Tigger is compared to Ethan!!! They are getting along so well! I couldn't be happier!



Ethan and I played in his gym for over an hour yesterday! He had so much fun and even bashed his head a few times with the toucan...too cute!!!





I spent hours in my scrapping room yesterday getting it organized...it's almost done just need to run into Jysk for a couple of things and it will be perfect! I don't know how much scrapping I'll get done in the next week...I have company steady! But it'll be ready when I am! I'll post some pics when I'm all done, it's a cool setup this time! I had to be really creative with the space I had.

I have to say that according to my sister Mary, TODAY is Ethans' One month Birthday. He was born April 26th, today is May 26th so she says that is a month. To me, he was born 4 Saturdays ago so he was a month on Saturday. I dunno, what do you think? Not that it really matters but you know how it is when you have a sister...someone has to be right...

Anyhow I'm off for a couple hours nap...I did my Mommy duties and can relax now. I can't believe it's already Monday!!!

~Ummm Houston..We have a Problem!!!~

So remember how I said in my post yesterday that we moved the crib into our bedroom? Wellllll apparently the cat is in his glory thinking that it is his new bed! Randy and I both got up several times last night to find him crashed out in the crib all curled up in a blanket that is in there. Both of us kicked him out of course but oy vey! What do we do about this? Obviously we will be having some training time with him that it is not his bed for the next few weeks. If it doesn't improve then he won't be allowed in the room with us. You think a newborn will keep you up at night? You haven't met my cat! Not looking forward to having to kick him out of the room...yowling cat = no sleep. Anyhow, I won't be getting any pictures of it, I'll be promptly kicking his ass out of it!

Also would love some positive thoughts sent our way as we find ourselves in a bit of a struggle. Randy is job-hunting because he has got no work coming in from Brent right now. So rather then waiting without money coming in we are being proactive and finding something else. Problem is that finding work that will pay near what he was making with Brent is proving difficult and of course our bills are set to the level of income he was making. Add to that I am STILL waiting for my ROE from NPR so that I can apply for my maternity benefits. It should be here this week but I'm sure not happy with the length of time this is taking considering that my last day was March 28th. They took it upon themselves to pay my Vacation Pay and commissions on a seperate cheque which added another couple of weeks to my waiting period. Gotta love that one eh? Oh well, here's hoping that I can get it processed quickly and won't have to wait for two centuries to have it start up.

My last word for that is: Sometimes life is totally rotten eh?

On a happy, positive note we went to see the Dr today for our weekly checkup. Last week we had a slew of tests done plus an ultrasound. Happy to report that they all came back perfect, on the ultrasound baby was given an 8 out of 8 rating (whatever that really means, but it sounds good eh?) Dr is happy with everything too. Randy and I got to talk to her about what to expect during delivery at this hospital and she walked us through everything. I was really disappointed to hear that I couldn't rely on an epidural as an option because the hospital only has one guy that can do it and if he is busy tough luck. So I have the options of morphine and gas readily available to me. Woopee! Oh well, we'll deal with that hurdle when it gets here, I'm not going to fret over it. Baby is going to be an okay size, we are at 5.5lbs right now so dr is figuring on an average sized baby. I guess that is the one benefit of going through pregnancy with Hypertension...you have smaller babies on average! Anyhow, we are really comfortable with our Dr and she is so down to earth, not to gloss stuff over kind of person that she is perfect for us.

We have got pretty much everything we need for baby now. I've joined FreeCycle again here so I'm going to keep my eyes out for baby clothes on there...I'm not planning on buying much in the area of clothing. Mom asked me today what we still needed and I said just Walmart gift cards! LOL! Diapers, diapers, diapers right!

Well I'm off to make some supper and keep myself busy for the evening!

~Supper and a couple of Pictures and a funny story about a runaway!~

So tonight I really, really, really didn't feel like cooking! I was in my own world playing on the computer, getting myself ready to go into my scraproom, a fun Saturday! Unfortunatly I had to make supper because Randy sure wasn't and the baby was hungry. (I mean Randy mostly!) So thankfully I had gone grocery shopping last night and was lazy enough to not package out the warehouse packs of meat I had bought so I had some choices in the fridge ready to go. I decided on chicken breast. Did you know that there are zillions of things you can do with a decent chicken breast? I figured it would be easy! I didn't want something boring mind you, but I also didn't want to be slaving over the stove for an hour. So I scoured the cupboards and came across this:

Patak's Korma Cooking Sauce

It is an East Indian cooking sauce that you just add chicken to, let simmer and serve with rice or potatoes. I've had this sauce kicking around for awhile so I thought, hey, let's give it a go! We like the Tikka Masala sauce and the description of this one was that it is a subtle blend of cream and coconut with hints of Garlic, ginger and coriander. We like all those ingredients so I felt confident that it would be good. So I diced my chicken, seared it for a few minutes, threw some rice and broccoli on to steam, then added the sauce and let it simmer away while I played on the computer for another 20 minutes. Then I served it on rice with the side of broccoli. This is what it looked like:

It looks a bit greasy and that is my fault because I was too lazy to drain off the excess oil from the chicken. Anyhow, the review is in and....we LOVED it!!! It was delicious. A very mild full flavored dish that was soooo easy to make. We will be having this again!!! You can find alot of cool recipes and uses for their sauces and mixes on their site here: Patak's Randy and I really like to try new foods and this is such an easy way to do it! No sitting in a restaurant trying to guess what stuff is and then trying not to offend anyone if you don't like it, not to mention saving money on it too! These sauces cost about $5-6 depending on where you buy them. It seems to me that I bought this one as part of a pack of two sauces from Costco for around $7.00. This made enough for supper tonight and another meal tomorrow! So give them a try if you haven't!

I thought I would share this picture of my baby bump with you. I saw some awesome maternity pictures online and am getting some ideas together to do a photo shoot in a month or so. So I was playing around the other day and got this one! I love it, even though you don't really get the perspective of my bump from it. I will be using this pose with a couple of tweaks when I do the real shoot! I really like the idea of it!!!

So the funny story of a runaway....I'm doing laundry today...as well as slaving over the stove...what the heck?!?!!? Anyhow, I have to of course lug it down the hall to the laundry room. So I take another load down a while ago and come back and start working on some other stuff. I had to go out to the front entry to grab something from Randy's coat and I noticed that the front door was wide open. I freaked out and yelled at Randy to help me find Tigger...did he get out??? I didn't even think about the "WHY" is the door open...duh! Anyhow, I look out the hall and sure enough there is Tigger, half way down the hall, sniffing at the neighbours doors! So I hollered at him to get back in the house, scared he would run past me and down the stairs because the stupid fire door doesn't close fully. I finally calmed down enough to talk him close enough so I could grab him and haul him in the house. What a stinker!!! I didn't think he had the balls to do that!!! So of course now, he wants out the front door every time I go out! He got a swift kick in the butt last trip, I'm hoping that he learns fast that he can't go out there...he is a chicken in most circumstances but he's had to adapt to so many different places to live that new places interest him, instead of scare him. Meanwhile, as I'm chasing the cat what is Randy doing? Playing WOW, totally ignoring me! Thanks honey! Don't worry, I've got it!

So he will be cleaning the kitchen and vacuuming as well as cooking breakfast tomorrow morning. Not sure if he knows that yet but he will learn real fast...

~I wonder...~

How is he going to respond to having a baby around when he has been our only baby for almost 6 years? We have been thinking of it since we found out that we are expecting and have even looked into it through some of our pregnancy books. We have decided that we will introduce the baby to him right away and make sure that one of us continues to give him attention so that he doesn't get jealous.

I'm sure some of you reading this blog may think this sounds bizarre but he has been our baby...and he does have a personality of his own. I don't want him to feel like he isn't a part of our family anymore or get jealous. That could lead to problems with having to watch him carefully with the baby.

So for now we plan but until baby actually gets here we won't know how he will respond. I know I can't be the first person to worry about how this will all play out...there are books about it, LOL!

~Hmmmm What is Tigger doing???~







He's looking a little determined...









Just wait... let me get out my BIG ZOOM lens, what the?!?!?! You little!!!!!!!!!

You would think he doesn't get fed... truth be told, he has the same food in his dish. Apparently the hunter instinct is still in him and he wants to get his own food!

So that was my funny happening for today!

Here's a cute one of Randy and Tigger from lunch today...