Blue-eyed beauties 3-2-1

I wish I could say I’ve been busy slaying dragons and conquering new skills, but no. Mostly just housework, hanging with the littles, and reorganizing my house. Actually, we shall restate that first bit. I have slain a dragon. Our playroom. I have completely reorganized it into an entirely unbeautiful and very functional toy storage system a la Rubbermaid, that makes it way easier for the kids to spend five minutes cleaning up. Instead of me spending two hours reorganizing every toy into it’s special spot, I have a bunch of buckets that are either by theme or by type, and they get one at a time, and if they want another they throw everything back in the Rubbermaid first. Pinworthy and beautiful? Not particularly. Functional? Absolutely.

I’ve also been working on skills, actually. Firstly, on my houseworking skills. Let’s be real here – it does not come to me naturally. If I strike you as the homemaker type, I apologize. In reality, I am the artsy fartsy type, and if I leave myself in my natural state I tend to sit up every so often and wonder what the heck happened. I’m forcing myself to create new habits and routines and so far I’m doing pretty well. I mean, two steps forward and one back – I have a toddler and a baby after all.

Secondly, I’m giving running another go. It’s actually just happenstance that I took it up in the New Year. That’s just when my husband and I came to the conclusion that going to the gym was not fitting in particularly well in this season of my life. Jackson has been clingy off and on, and my husband struggles with him when I’m gone, and that’s stressful for everyone involved. So in lieu of not having a whole gym available we opted for a second hand treadmill. I’m nearly done my second week of it and I’m getting stronger, faster, and yes, losing weight as well. But mostly I’m feeling more energetic, which is really helping with that housework skills thing… especially since I’ve got less sleep lately than I ever got when Jackson was a newborn. C’est la vie, and this baby season is long days and short years, and all the snuggles and laughter are totally worth the lack of sleep.

However, I have resolved to do or create something every day, even if it’s just a photograph. So, on a particularly crazy day, I pulled out my dslr and took pictures of my crazies. Then I edited them another day. Every day a little bit of something! Running and creating even just little bits, that’s what’s keeping me in a happy, healthy place (mentally and physically) this cold cold winter.

How about you? How do you keep in the happy healthy zone?

Jackson

Jackson :
8 weeks old
A whopping 13.5 lb of breastfed goodness
Smiley and quite awake
Has an umbilical hernia (shouldn’t require surgery and doesn’t require much extra care, just caution and attention)
Is going through his fussy stage but I think I figured it out today… he wants to sit up and be present. He’s over the constant sleeping and he’s not super interested in toys, he would like to sit somewhere with a good view and supervise. Actually, the way he looks at toys, I think he’s suspicious of them, and I’m pretty sure his thoughts on the mobile are something the lines of ‘circling… always circling…’

Here’s a peek at my baby announcements. Just in case anyone hadn’t noticed yet that I wasn’t 10.5 months pregnant, we’re still planning to send out announcements. I found a sweet template here on etsy, and I’m probably going to do an actual opening card and send it out to less people to compensate for the extra cost. Actually, considering the stack of envelopes with names and not addresses or stamps that I tossed a few months ago containing Olivia’s birth announcements, possibly more people. Awkward.

I do have other children besides Jackson, I am aware. I dragged the three of them to a bootcamp yesterday morning, one that allows you to bring your kids. (google The Tyson Method) I was a bit late, and Olivia was a bit of a clingy burr because she is really shy around strangers. Nicole is more the “Hi my name is Nicole and these are my siblings names and this is my phone number and would you like mom’s SIN number?” kind of a deal. Don’t worry, she doesn’t actually know my SIN number, phew. It’s a new thing, having a shy kid. Benefits to both, I’d say. Anyways, I was feeling like a badass at bootcamp. Look at me doing jumping jacks! Squat squat squat! Oh yeah, feel the burn. Oh. Hey, that really burns. Ow. More? Do not want. My butt muscles are shaking. I’m secretly glad I keep having to stop and deal with Olivia. I hate this. Can I have a cookie now? And then my muscles were so done that I couldn’t even haul my stroller up the small flight of stairs to get back out. I was lucky to have help available.

I was dreading this morning, and oh, was it ever everything I thought it would be. And more. You know you got your butt whooped at bootcamp when you’re sitting on the toilet looking around sadly, wondering if the toilet paper roll dispenser would give out if you tried to use it to haul yourself up to avoid using your leg muscles. Wishing for a handicap bar. Wishing you could pee standing up. Anything but that dreadful moment of sitting down or getting up from the toilet. Whyyyyyyyyy????! sob.

I don’t want to be skinny, I just want to be fit. Actually, let’s try that again. I have realistic expectations and an intense love of cooking, baking, and eating, would love to be skinny but would have to step away from the cupcake first, and want to be fit. Rumour has it that the afterburn feeling discourages you from noshing but so far no luck. I did a bunch of baking for bible study (which I wasn’t able to attend, but I’m sure my baking paid good attention) and did no small amount of tasting, licking, sampling, cleaning off spatulas, and the like. I figure I’m actually working harder if I’m pushing up more weight in a push-up, so its all good, right? ….right?

all photos in this post (except the picture of Jackson compared to Chris’ hand in the baby announcement) are thanks to Amy Vanderveen Photography

untwinned

 

When they were little babies my girls were basically twins but now, at six months, Olivia has quite definitely deviated from the previous Baby Blueprint we seemed to have going on there.

Nicole at six months:

Olivia at six months:

I know, I actually have a nice camera to take pictures of Olivia with yet somehow the Nicole picture is much better. Go figure. This is the most similar picture that I’ve got, and it’s from my Ipod. Olivia actually has much lighter eyes than Nicole, who has really dark moody blues. Olivia’s are more like her daddy’s. Olivia is also much chubbier, but with a skinnier face. And the moral of the story is, we make pretty babies. The end.

Gratuitous Baby Pictures

Olivia is a GroVia and/or GroBaby baby, if anyone is curious. I cloth diaper like 60% of the time and feel no guilt whatsoever about the other 40%. NONE. I also feel no guilt when I have extraordinarily long, hot showers. Since I have that new-baby-mom haven’t-showered-in-three-days funkiness to me at least once a week I feel like it evens out.

(edited March 1st – we’re at 100% of the time because I got stubborn and decided not to buy any more disposables. As a result my hubby is no longer assisting with the diapering but we’ll see who lasts longer – diapering Olivia is pretty hilarious. She gets ridiculously excited when you take her pants off.)

This next shot is my ‘sweet shot’… I am SO pleased with it.

I don’t know about you but I could spend like an hour nomnomnom-ing on those cheekies. Do you notice something different about these pictures? I’m using an old Yashica 55mm lens attached to my camera with an adaptor. Manual focus, whatwhaaat! It’s tricky, but I’m super in love and I go on to Christopher about how much I want to buy one actually made for my camera so I can have autofocus. Daily. And show him lots of pictures. And go on about bokeh in a really annoying voice.

We can’t be smiling all the time. Life is stressful when you’re a baby.

Juuuuuust kidding, no it’s not.

We’re getting our family pictures done this weekend, I’m pretty excited. I’ve been avoiding baking cookies all week in preparation. And doing exercises. Like baby lifts. And rocking back and forth with a baby. And walking around with a baby. That kind of stuff. *flexes*

Which witch is which?

That tongue twister is actually a terrible title for this post. I take it back. Neither of my daughters are witchy. (Thus says Laura when both of them are sleeping. Ask me how I feel when they’re both wailing for funsies.) Anyways, those of you who are friends with me on facebook – not the page but me the person – have seen these side-by-side pictures of Nicole and Olivia already. They tickle me pink, though, so I’m sharing them with y’all too.

Nicole at one month, Olivia at one month

Nicole at two months, Olivia at two months

They aren’t identical but they are definitely sisters, that's for sure! And I think Nicole is quite a pretty little thing, if I do say so myself, so it’s nice to know that Olivia will be, too. In my totally unbiased opinion, winkwink.

Coo over my babies. Coo, I tell you!

This one, by the way, weighed in at 14 lbs. at her two month appointment the other day. She’s also in the 97th percentile for height. My two month old is too tall for most of the 3-6 month dresses I have for her, they look ridiculous. 6-12 is of course far too wide even for this little meatball, here. So… to the batmobile! Wait, no. The sewing room! I have visions of a slew of little peasant dresses dancing in my head. If things go nicely I shall prep some tutorials. It’s been a long year, but I’m starting to rev my engines again! This year will be more craft, less reno. I say with drywall dust in my coffee machine. DO NOT ASK. TOUCHY SUBJECT.

I should be doing laundry :)

Oooh, Saturday. What a good day to put off tasks. Especially if you’re home alone with a cuddly new baby. Nicole spent the night at her Grandma’s house, so my morning involved sleeping in til nearly 9, then eating a yummy breakfast of eggs and sausages prepared by my hubby, followed by coffee provided by and brought to me by aforementioned hubby while I snuggled Olivia and caught up on my blogreader feed. Bliss. Did I mention the Christmas music in the background? Feel free to hate me for being one of those people, but honestly, it looks like the North Pole out my window anyways.

Just thought I’d share some of what I’ve been up to lately… still practising my photography, just haven’t been doing a lot of sharing. Here’s a few of my favourites from the last two months.

One of my beautiful friends and her younger son. It’s hard to believe this picture was taken about a month ago. And now it’s the North Pole.

Another beautiful friend. I have quite the supply of beautiful friends, actually. And here’s a few pictures I took of Olivia last week… I love how she’s just all belly, hehe. My favourite from the shoot will go on my birth announcement, which I’ll share online after it’s been sent out. And this last one was just for fun, she got sick of the shoot right as I was trying to use the basket. She’s a very patient baby but this time she just got MAD. And then she peed on my fur for revenge. But since she pooped like mad as soon as I put her diaper on right after this, it could have been much worse ;) Don’t pretend you don’t love my modesty leaf, bahaha.

I do have a bunch of craft stuff to share, I did a whole bunch of sewing and crocheting for this little girl during my pregnancy. I should have photographed and edited as I went along and posted after, I didn’t think of the fact I’d have a hard time finding a chance to blog!