The Summerside Church of the Nazarene Rocks my Socks!

Never will I be able to fully explain to anyone how blessed I have felt this holiday season! But I'm willing to give it a whirl! There, of course, are the non-holiday related blessings; I love my husband, and he loves me in return, we have a fantastic son, and are surrounded by beautiful babies! We have a home, food to eat, a car to drive, and clothes to wear. We have an extended family that loves and supports us, we also have friends that we love like family all over the world. Every day is Christmas, every day we know that these are blessings from God.

The holidays just make everything shiny and new again. :) I love shiny things.

Our Christmas was fabulous. In our living room was the 5 of us, plus my sister, her husband, and my mom. X loved nearly everything (he did get some underwear), and the babies slept through a lot of it. We had pizza for lunch. Yes we did. We ate "junk" food all day! There is a reason! 2nd Christmas was planned for the 27th because Dad arrived late on the 26th, so we thought we'd have "Christmas dinner" then. And we did. Mmmmmm. So good.

With Dad and 2nd Christmas came shower gifts from our Church family in Summerside! In fact, I'm going to change the title of this blog right now. With these gifts, plus the gifts from Mom and Dad, Aunt and Uncle, and my 2 bothers and the wonderful ladies who (for some reason) love these bothers back East, 2nd Christmas took just as long to open as first Christmas!!! With all the confusion, paper flying, babies eating, X helping to open, cards and gifts did not necessarily stay together! So here's a thank you for all the gifts from Summerside!

The Blankets are awesome! I love tag blankets! The sleepers are totally cute and will fit very shortly! It's scary how quickly V and L are going through sizes! The diaper bags are great! My sister is impressed with the "Hello Kitty" motif. The ornaments are fantastic! I couldn't find appropriate "1st Christmas" ornaments, and I totally love these! I actually didn't even see X's "Big Brother" ornament until a couple of days ago, he is so proud of it he hung it on his door! The Willow Tree figurine will be added to our growing collection, so beautiful! The gift cards, and monetary gifts were also much appreciated and will be put toward the never-ending need for diapers, wipes and formula! :) It makes my heart super warm to think of how well my babies are loved, supported and prayed for!

Of course my family gave wonderful gifts as well! Hopefully soon, as in when I find my camera again, I will post some pictures of our Holiday Hurrah! (Pssst, that was the original title of this post.)

May your New Year be filled with blessing, may you surround yourself with love, and may you find the will power to skip the chip aisle in the grocery store! That last one is mostly directed to me! :)

Zombie Dream

I love my dreams. I have great dreams! One of my favourite classes in University was Dr. Nienkirchen's dream class...except for that terrible "Visions" book. Terrible book. ;) I often have what I categorize as 'adventure' dreams. For example, uncovering and taking down a human trafficking ring, exploring the amazon jungle, things along that nature. When I remember, I tell M my dreams. This morning when I told him my dream he said I HAD to blog it. So here it is.

ZOMBIE BABIES!!

You're laughing already aren't you? I can hear you. Just so you know, there are some DISTURBING things that come up when you search for 'zombie babies.' People are crazy. Back to my dream.

M, L, V and I were scuba diving. Not somewhere warm like Australia, or Hawaii, or where normal people would dream of scuba diving. No. We were scuba diving in the Atlantic ocean, off the coast of Nova Scotia, exploring the Titanic wreck. Sounds like a great family vacation yeah? Yes, we took the babies scuba diving! Turns out (in my dream and possibly in reality) no one had ever taken babies to the wreck site before. So of course, L and V caught the zombie virus from the Titanic wreck. They turned all pasty white, and their eyes went black, and they looked like they were water logged. Also, their clothes transformed into floaty white old fashioned gowns. It was really scary! They were still babies, so when we got back up to our boat we put them down and they couldn't magically walk or anything, but they were crying for me, but I knew they wanted to eat me, and not in the normal way!

The worst part about the whole thing was I woke up from the dream with L crying to eat. I had to wait at least two minutes to wake up properly to get over my irrational fear of my baby! Sometimes my brain is just weird.

Hopefully tonight I'll have a more Christmas-themed dream rather than horror! Sleep tight everybody!

Clean-Up!

A couple of things from past posts that I need to follow up on!

Remember the shredded green herb? Totally Summer Savory! Hahaha! Go me. But I am told that my Nan enjoyed reading it out loud to my Pop, so happiness was spread! This is my main goal in blogging, so Hooray! Turns out my uncle does not like it when Nan puts sage into her stuffing, so she only sneaks it in sometimes. :)

I forgot to answer my favourite question! My long lost friend from Junior high took a gander at my blog, and when we saw each other next she asked me if I am a professional writer. My answer? I WISH! I've been dreaming of writing my own book for years (those high school friends out there can attest to that!), but I find it hard to believe that people I don't know would be entertained by that which I have to say. I love writing this for you, and I hope that it gives you the giggles, and helps me by being writing practice! Maybe I'll be published someday.

X hit his head again. What an accident-prone child! The school called just after lunch one day last week to tell us that he stood up directly under a metal bar at the playground. He wasn't hurt like last time, but they just wanted to let us know because of what happened last time. X goes to Catholic school, and when I asked him how his head felt, he told me it started feeling a lot better during liturgy. Bahaha! What a spiritual little boy.

Questions Answered!

I've been asked a lot of questions in the past few weeks, so I thought I would have a go at answering some of them! If my answers simply pique your curiosity, feel free to ask me more through comments or facebook! As I've mentioned before, I'm pretty honest up here, so I'll more than likely answer it, as long as I can and the question is about me! Hahaha!

Before I forget, I'm going to start with church. Some of you have been wondering what our final decision concerning church was. Well, we left the small dangerous church. Really, we stayed with it as long as we did to support my mom who was teaching Sunday school, but it just got to be too much for us all. Even Mom has since taken break from teaching there. M, X, V, L and I (bahahaha) have been attending the Fellowship Baptist church. From the very first week we were there people talked to us! It's a very large church, but the pastor has talked to us every time he's seen us I think. X's Sunday school teacher is great and there are 5 other grade one students in his class! He's enjoying it very much, and I look forward to making more meaningful contacts here.

Now on to less serious. Here are some questions I've been asked by strangers:

Are they twins? Yes.
A boy and a girl? No. (don't you see all the pink!?) 2 girls.
Oh! Are they identical? No. (Thank you Jesus for saying "yes" to my pleas!)
How old are they? (insert appropriate answer depending on time frame) 2 1/2 months.
What!? They look big! How big were they? 8-6 and 7-5.
(bulging eyes) You must have been HUGE! Yes.

Here's a question I don't fully understand:

Natural?

There are a couple of reasons I don't understand. A number of strangers have asked this question! With just the one word! Some asked while I was still pregnant, some after they were born! So I don't know if they are asking if they were conceived naturally or if they were delivered naturally. Either way really....strangers need to know the answer to that question either way? So I just say yes and let them think what they want. They are natural babies!

Questions my friends have asked (and if you're reading my blog, you are my friend, even if you are from Russia and we've never met!):

Are you still nursing? Yes.
Both? No. I picked my favourite to feed, M picked his, and he feeds her. Of course both! Silly people. They are getting 6 ozs of formula before bedtime to help facilitate the sleeping action though. Both.
Do you have trouble telling them apart? Not even a little. They are the same height, and very close in weight, but seriously, they are completely different shapes! V is a buddah-baby, L has cankles. L is a chia pet. She went bald on top and now her hair is growing back straight up. L has a round head (except for the flat spot from sleeping on one side for 2 months. bad mom), V has an oval head. They are just different! :)
Do they sleep through the night? Sometimes. I get maybe 6 hours sometimes. :)
Why don't you post more pictures? I don't know! I'm sorry!

Okay. Those are the questions I can think of right now. I hope you're all excited for Christmas! I know we are here! Dodie Bob is on his way out again! Hooray! (New question? Dodie Bob is my dad, X's original name for his grandfather! When X was born he had a Mom Oliver, Grampie John, Grammie, Grampie, Nan, Pop, Grandma Anna, Grandma Soup and Grandpa Doug he needed something completely original!)

Have a great day!!!

Video-palooooza!

Grandmothers!

I have two grandmothers. Today I have two great things to tell you. My grandmothers are completely different, so my stories are also completely different.

First, it's more like a funny observation-conjecture. The other day my Grammie was complaining about me. Well, she was apparently complaining about a lot of things, but this blog is about me, so let's focus here people!! Her complaint about me is that I am too honest. My funny observation? She is not even online! She does not follow me on Twitter, is not my friend on facebook, nor does she read this blog! If she knew I was talking to the world in general about miscarriages, c-sections, post-partum, bathroom humour, and nursing so much I expect the National Geographic people to show up any time because my boobs are out THAT much, I think she'd disown me! But she comes from a silent era. Don't talk about personal stuff, and for goodness sake, make sure everyone believes your life is perfect! But we've learned that it's okay not to be perfect, haven't we? God still loves us, and people respect us even more for dealing with our imperfections! And it's way fun to be super honest!

On a side-note, my Mother follows me on Twitter, my Dad is my friend on facebook, and both parents and my Nan and Pop read my blog...so I still edit a bit! :)

Second story! My Nan and Pop sent a Christmas box to us! Hoooray! So much fun! The best part of the box? A special little baggie with shredded green plant material. Now before you go calling my husband on me, I think it's called sage. It could be summer savory. I'm not as domesticated as Nan would like me to be yet. :) What's important is that it's the herb that Nan puts in her stuffing every Christmas. Now, even though the sage (we'll call it that until she corrects me) is double baggied, my whole house smells like Christmas!! It made me so excited when I pulled it out! So yummy! I might use too much in my excitement when it comes time to prepare dinner, but I'll eat it anyway!

Love you Nan and Pop! Merry Christmas!!! :)

The X Files

No copyright infringement intended. :)

My boy with his kitty.

Nearly everyone has been asking how X has taken to his sisters! Instead of simply answering that question, I'm dedicating this whole post to him! Because my son is still as strange and wonderful as he has ever been! So you can imagine he has given me quite a bit of material lately!

Do you know that commercial for Charmin brand toilet paper? The one where the little bear promises to conserve in the house by using less toilet paper? How old would you say they are trying to depict that "child" bear to be? 5? 6? 7? LIARS! We can not buy Charmin brand in this household because X can not use less. He plugged the toilet 3 times in a week with just paper! Poor M. Shout out to AM and UA who live in the basement and continue to lend us a plunger, as we keep forgetting to buy one for ourselves!

More bathroom humour you say? Something else X can not seem to process is the courtesy of closing the bathroom door. It's just at home that he leaves it open, but it doesn't matter if we have company or not! And if you dare walk by he yells at you for looking! Not my fault you forgot to close the door!!! Also, the singing. If he's in there for any length of time, he multitasks by writing songs. And washing his hands usually turns into epic under-water battle of good (left hand) vs. evil (right hand).

X tells the funniest jokes! Want to hear one? Knock knock. (Who's there?) Orange. (Orange who?) Orange is a banana! Hahahaha! Get it? No? Would you like another? Why did the dog cross the road? Because he wanted money! Hahahahha. Still not getting the humour? Ok. One more. Why did the mom talk to the dad? Because they are in love with each other! Hahahaha! I'll ask him to tell me one right now, we'll see what he comes up with. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he wanted to get some chicken food! Why did the fox go out for supper? Because he saw some chickens on his way for supper! He's 'on' like that all the time!

Since he's in grade one this year, he's learning how to read! It's driving me bananas! Here is a typical conversation between us; X: Mom, is this a word? R-A-M. Me: Sound it out. Does it sound like a word? X: Rrra...rrrr...rrrr aaaaa.....rrraaaam. ram. Yes it sounds like a word. What does it mean? Me: It's just the name of that truck parked next to us at the red light. X: Oh. Is this a word? L-I-G-H-T. Me: Sound it out. Does it sound like a word? X: Llllllla....llllleye...lllleyega...llleyegagahehe.... Me: Ok. It's a tricky one. The 'gh' is silent so it says light. X: Oh. light. Ok. Is this a word? Me: Honey. I'm driving now, so I can't concentrate, you sound it out ok? X: Am I being a bad boy? Me: No honey, I just can't concentrate on spelling and driving, you sound it out. X: Ok.

As for getting along with his sisters? It's getting better. We had a bad moment when we went to Walmart the other day. It used to be that every once in a while X would sit in a cart and play my DSi while M and I shopped, now there is no room for him to sit. The babies take up all the room! So he got upset that they have disturbed his world in such a way. At home he's pretty good. He's excited that they watch him walk around and they smile at him. He plays peek-a-boo with them and rocks them in their chairs when I'm doing laundry or some such thing. He's still limiting himself to shaking their hands goodnight. If someone is holding a baby he gives a hug for both, but babies don't get a hug on their own, and he won't even consider kissing their heads. I don't know what the hold up is, but he'll get to it! :)

So that's my boy. He's great. He's getting bullied at school already, which makes me angry. He wants to be friends with the older kids, and they call him names and laugh at him for trying to play with them. I try to explain why they act like they do, but how can I? I can't very well say "the older boys called you a stupid boy because they are stupid." It's the hardest thing to deal with in school. Still thinking about home schooling for junior high! Bah! By then the girls will be in school! Holy crap.

On that thought....have a great day! :)