I was considering a wooden doll stroller.  Now, I know you can buy doll umbrella strollers for pennies, and that’s cool.  But I live in a small house, and if I have to look at this stupid-ass stroller, and trip over this stupid-ass stroller, I’d like it to be pretty.  I’d also like it to be durable, so it doesn’t break when I am forced to walk Stella around our block (and I will be forced to walk Stella around the block.  I am already forced to put Stella into her pajamas, and into the baby carrier, and feed her.  Did I mention Stella is A DOLL?).  I live in a rural-like setting, there are no sidewalks and the roads are paved, I guess, but not in a smooth city-like way.  So, yes, while I can buy an inexpensive doll umbrella stroller, I don’t want to.

Thing is, I can’t find a reasonably priced stroller close to home.  Found a gorgeous one in Arizona, but that doesn’t much help me.

Now I’m back to square one.  I thought about a plasma car, but then I’d have one plasma car and two toddlers.

yeah, that’s just stupid.

Any ideas?  A few caveats – nothing plasticy as it makes me irritable.  If it is large it needs to be able to fold up and store under a small bed or behind a couch (like I said, I live in a very crowded, small house).  She already has a tricycle and a dollhouse (god my children are spoiled.  Hell, they have a flippin’ toddler grand piano!  And a rocking horse!  Is there anything left?!).  Up to about $100 is fine, but we really can’t go any more expensive.  We don’t watch a lot of TV so movies are out, too.

I’m considering putting $100 in her savings account but it seems so unfun to do that when she’s at such a super fun age and would love a present.

I do have a couple of inexpensive, crafty items I was hoping to make for her, including her own Super Claire! costume, but we have always given the kids a fairly ‘big’ present and then a couple of ‘little’ presents.  It’s the ‘big’ present I can’t seem to sort out.

I mean, do they really need to be washed?  How different things are when it’s the third…

This random bout of nesting has been brought to you by my mid-wife, who seemed slightly shocked that I wasn’t even a little bit prepared and gently encouraged me to get out the pool from the shop this weekend.  The pool that has a slow leak that needs to be fixed before it could even be considered for the birth.  We’re hopeful that this time around we’ll put water in it.  Assuming, of course, we fix the leak.

She also encouraged me to find some diapers and receiving blankets at a bare minimum.  Unfortunately I gave away all the newborn diapers and I turned all my receiving blankets into rags for the kitchen so I had to buy some of those, too.

Expensive, this reproducing.

I also managed to score 3m of fabric for the mural I have planned for the kid’s new room for cheap.  Wash baby clothes?  Not that high on my list of things to do, but design and prepare a completely useless mural from fabric?  ON IT. 

Now all I need to do is, oh nevermind, the list is pretty flippin’ long.

*although, judging by my last experience I’m debating how neccessary they are considering I used none of it.  Then gave it all away.  And now I’m buying it all again.

I’ve also been mad busy.  MAD.  Meeting after meeting, on top of the whole about to have a baby any day now thing.  I’m worn out.  I have bouts of nesting, but mostly I’m just tired.  Everything is overwhelming and it seems like there is a million things to do.  This is typical for me in the last weeks of a pregnancy, judging by the archives, but it doesn’t get my kitchen floor clean or that trip to the grocery store taken of.

At any rate, tired or not I did manage to scratch off a few items on the old “To Do” list, including painting Callum’s room and begining the rearranging process for when Claire moves in there.    I’m taking suggestions on how to cram two single beds, two dressers, the toyboxes and some place to store books.   Bunk beds are out, the kids are too small, not that that has stopped me from considering the bunk bed route.  The reality is that everything isn’t going to fit in there but maybe you’ve seen some sort of cool storage device for small spaces I need to know about?!

The weather out in these parts has been spectacular, so we are trying to get outside to play, or to the beach for a make-shift picnic.  And we took a day-trip to Victoria to visit the Royal BC Museum and the Victoria Bug Museum.  The bug museum was amazing, mostly because our guide in that tiny little room was amazing.  The kids loved it, Callum said the cockroaches were his favorite part.  That kid even pet a tarantula!  Definite must do again although I’ve heard it is hit-or-miss and really boils down to getting a great guide.

Ramble, ramble.  Hopefully I’ll get my energy up this week and do some more regular posting.

first we bobsled...

then we ski jump...

snip

snippity snip

happy farmer

Today we harvested our pea sprouts we planted a couple of weeks ago.  I’m assuming this is when you eat pea sprouts because I honestly have no idea but I’m pretty sure if we continued to wait we’d soon have peas… 

These  guys got thrown into our shrimp stirfry for dinner.  If I don’t post for a couple of days, send help, I may have poisoned the family by eating these things.   Or maybe that white mouldy looking stuff on some of the seeds is deadly…

**

Total aside, I do enjoy how a series of photographs like this can paint me as this super Mom that should be featured in a magazine article -  Mom Feeds Family With Pea Sprouts Planted on Window Sill.  When in reality this harvesting took about 45 seconds and I spent most of the afternoon lying on the couch reading a book.  In my own defence, I did the laundry too. AND made dinner (which took about 20 minutes, but hey!  Dinner!  Served!).

sleeping

I was moving stuff around in the living room this morning (well, between reading my book and lounging around I was moving stuff around) and the kids decided to use this shelf as a bunk bed.

I considered moving it upstairs to their room.  Considerably cheaper than buying two twin sized beds. 

Another crazy beautiful day and while that is not so good for the Olympics it is lovely for ME, so we went to the beach to show off, and have a feast of a picnic lunch.

another beautiful day at the beach. IN FEBRUARY.

Then we came home and lazed around in the yard for awhile before sitting down to a home-made dinner of cereal (what?  it was poured into the bowl at home) followed by a movie with Papa. 

movie time!

Kinda a nice way to spend a Friday.  It’s too bad Papa didn’t work half-days everyday.  I could get used to this.

the fun!

Like cats, really the only toy a kid needs is a cardboard box.  As Jillian Jiggs would say

“Oh, look at the boxes! Yippee! Hooray!

It’s hard to believe someone threw these away.

I’m mad about boxes.  Boxes are fun.

No one will guess who we are when we’re done.”

never ends!

dinner time music

I threatened to put her to bed if she didn’t sit down properly and eat.  She then proceeded to scream “PUT ME TO BED” during the entire meal.  Steve asked me why I didn’t put her to bed.  Because it was an empty threat, okay?  I just wanted to eat my dinner while it was hot.  I was hungry.  I thought the threat would work and it didn’t but I wasn’t actually prepared for the drama of putting her to bed at dinnertime and not getting an opportunity to eat the lovely meal I made.

yes, I FAIL AS A MOTHER.

We typically eat fairly late, around 6:00 or 6:30 pm.  well, I consider this late because honestly, the kids should eat before 5:30.  As a result the kids are pretty miserable at the supper hour making it the absolute worse part of my day, hands down.   And when Steve isn’t here for dinner, well, it can get pretty awful.

Part of that is my own fault because there are some things I can’t let go.  I have to do the dishes after dinner.  My reason for this is pretty valid, though, because I work in the evenings and waiting until the kids go to bed before doing the dishes means I wouldn’t be sitting down to work until likely after 9 pm.  That is completely mad and so I do the dishes immediately after dinner. This is fine when Steve is here because he plays with the kids and gives them a bath.  It’s hell when he isn’t here because I’ve spent the last two hours prepping/cooking/eating/cleaning up dinner and the kids are hungry/tired/pissy. 

It’s fun.

At least Callum was ridiculously adorable tonight.  Although, honestly, that is unusual since the drama is typically flipped with Callum being troublesome and Claire peacefully eating.

little ham