EDD + 5

obviously no tink yet. i was kind of hoping she'd be born either today or yesterday (i suppose there's still a few hours to make it for today) so that she'd be born on the thirty-somthingth. Dad is hoping for tomorrow. That's cause tomorrow is Switzerland's national holiday. August 1st would be all right too - as long as I don't have to call her Helvetia!

The cuties came over to play today. I especially like jadey's pink headband.

Andrew's building me some shelves for a linen closet of sorts. Davey checks on Daddy's work to make sure he's getting it right.

YUM

While Auntie/Mum picks the blackberries, Davey, Jadey and Andrew make short work of them. Mnnnnnn sun-warmed blackberries!!

On his way to join Ashlie for some fun on the ground.

Just can't get no respect: Even Randall sticks his tongue out when I try and take a picture.

Ashlie gets cheeky with me.

Rock and Roll Baby

I haven't taken many pictures lately. I think I'm saving up for when Tink is born and I get to take millions and millions of pictures of her and her and Davey. I've even got his "I'm the big brother" shirt packed so we can stage that picture at the hospital.



Since the weather has been so warm lately, we haven't been dressing Davey in his 'regular' clothes. So it was with a bit of shock that we noticed the other night how short his pyjamas are getting. You know those big huge garbage cans everyone has? The beige ones with wheels? Well Davey is as tall as our bins now. So I decided to go through his clothes last night and it seems he's outgrown all of his pants except for one pair!! Rooting through the stuff we've been given in the next size up it seems he only has one pair of those...well you know what that means! I got to go shopping. Old Navy had some cute stuff on sale:





Total rock'n roll outfit, hunh? I can't wait to try him in those clothes!

And well, I said I hadn't taken any pictures of Davey lately. Well, tonight he decided to soap up before he got in the bath. Looks pretty pleased with himself, doesn't he?! Warra cutie :)

Something I keep forgetting to tell my mom....

What makes this story even funnier to me, is that when my mum was a little girl, her sisters used to make her sing this song over and over again...and laugh uproariously at her. So whenever I hear it, I already think of silliness.

Andrew's mom bought David a CD with kid's music on it. A lot of the old fashioned hymns. We listen to it in the car (when we're not listening to Little People's Let's Go to the Beach). Ashlie seems to enjoy the music and has been learning many of the songs from it.

The other day though, we were driving and during one particular song she asked, "Auntie, what are they singing about here? Is it something about Sun?"

I listened for a sec, then responded, "A Sun Beam, A Sun Beam, Jesus wants me for a Sun Beam".

"Oh," she says, obviously relieved. "I thought they were singing Jesus wants me for a zombie."

Ramblings

My son continues to amaze me.

First of all, yesterday was the most boring day ever. We started with a trip to the Obstetricans who are overseeing my pregnancy. Because they're a team of three, plus locums for them when they're on holiday, plus a locum to give them days off, Andrew and I hadn't met all the doctors yet. Actually, with David we only ever met Dr. A and one of the locums. Dr. B delivered Davey and did my follow up. Yesterday I was seeing Dr. M so Andrew wanted to come along and meet her too, which meant Davey had to come since we have no one to leave him with right now.

The receptionists didn't tell us that she was busy delivering a baby via C-Section, so she was REALLY late seeing me. Davey was wonderful. Especially for the 1/2 hour or so we were waiting in the exam room. He HATES doctor's offices at present and gets very scared. After about ten minutes he calmed down and played for the rest of our session.

We had two and a half hours for lunch and a nap, then we went for Andrew's doctor's appointment. Since we also had to see the same doctor for Kathi, we dropped Andrew off and drove to Booster Juice to grab some smoothies before returning to the waiting room. Davey was awesome! There were four people in the waiting room and he entertained them all. I've never been to the doctor and had it feel like coffee break in the waiting room before, but by the time we left (at which point the room was full...the doctor was running behind and so everyone was about 30-45 mins late) my stomach muscles were SO sore from laughing. Not that he was being a clown in particular, we just had a jolly atmosphere going.

Anyway, I can't stand being in appointments all day, I was so impressed he was good.

David has also made leaps and bounds in other ways this week. On Monday he started counting. Just out of the blue. We don't actively try to teach him his numbers, but we do have books with numbers in them, and on his slide there's a grid with one to ten which we sometimes count on. But on Monday he did 1-5 several times, and then 5 - 8 as well. WOW.

Mum says he can identify coloured crayons if you ask him to select a certain colour. He hasn't done that for me yet though.

Today in the car he was looking at his "hungry caterpillar" book and started telling me the story. not full sentences mind you, but he definitely knows how the story goes.

And he makes up the greatest songs. So very funny.

I feel like I have nothing to do with these advances he's making. Maybe Andrew is secretly coaching him. Either that or we have some kind of genius child on our hands who is just figuring things out on his own. Sweet.

And now news of David's sister: Well, the doctor's appointment didn't really reveal much other than there is still a baby in my gut. But this morning I was having weird twinges for about an hour. I spoiled it by having a lie down and they went away. They came back again this evening, but as I've gotten absorbed in blogging they've stopped again. Here's fingers crossed that I'll go into labour on my own (no inducement this time!) and soon :)

YUCK!...oh and poor Katt

On Monday my sister had surgery on her index finger and wrist. Why, you ask? Well, she had a tumour in the tip of her finger that we decided she didn't really need. But once they took that out, she needed some more bone in her finger, so they stole some from her wrist to fill the gap.
Here's a picture of what her arm looked like till this afternoon.

Now, yesterday Katt's banages were too tight. In attempting to loosen them she knocked most of them right off and needed help getting them back on. Unfortunately, I was the only person around to do so. Those of you who have heard of my obsession with kneecaps will have guessed I'm not great around gore. Nonetheless, I tried to help.

My sister was so scared it would hurt that she was crying. I was so scared I'd see something I didn't want to, I was very, very, very woozy. Meanwhile, my normally wussy mum was there describing everything she could see in great detail. I've never been so close to passing out in my life!

Knowing all of this, I was still somehow coerced into bringing a camera into the exam room when Katt got her dressings changed today. I was willing to be there for hand holding, but how do you take a picture with your eyes closed??

Here are the results:

This is her wrist where the bone was taken from: OUCH


And here's the finger where the little guy was removed and the bone was inserted. Again, OUCH. I'm so proud of my brave sister. And she didn't even cry a little today. I would have been out cold on the floor.

David and Ashlie take turns listening to music on Grandma's discman. David was in awe of the new toy.

IT'S ROB'S BIRTHDAY!

That's right! There's Rob with Beanu (the brown bear Davey likes to play with) and his bear. We got them for Christmas almost 30 years ago (probably 29 this year).

Rob was always fanatical about cleanliness. Here he is lecturing mum and dad on how properly to clean his bottles.

Me and Rob somewhere around 1980.

And about 16 years later, when we went to Switzerland during summer holidays.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROB!!!

D-Day

Well, according to my medical chart, this is Tink's estimated delivery date (or EDD).

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow where we'll figure out how overdue I'm allowed to go before we take drastic action.

In the meantime I'm drinking lots of raspberry tea and no, I'm not going outside anymore.

Dad decided to dump a cup of water on Dave this afternoon. That set off a water fight in which Dad got pushed in the pool. Heh heh heh. FINALLY we can beat him in a waterfight!!

What a little imp.

Beating up grosspapa. You gettim kids!

Davey and Grosspapa sharing some snacks.

The cat's name is squishy. He has hair like a sheep. A sheep that lives outside and never gets groomed. Very coarse and very prone to clumping. Dave decided to shave some of his coat off. I lent him Andrew's clippers and he went nuts. Well, Squish got bored when Dave was about half done, so I guess he'll finish tomorrow.

Ashlie hiding from the camera.

We had lent Davey's exersaucer to friends. Today we got it back. Davey was VERY excited and immediately set about playing with all the gadgets. It looks a little small for him though.

Davey was excessively talkative at breakfast this morning so, wanting to preserve the sound of his cute little baby voice, I pulled out the camcorder. Our battery is dead and we can't seem to get the right one for this gadget, so I can only use it when it's plugged into the wall - and therefore hardly ever use it.

When Jadey stopped by I happened to catch the cutest scene on tape though. If I ever learn how to post video to this I'll have to put it on.

Davey and Jade were (grudgingly) taking turns pushing each other around in the little yellow and red car. At one point, Jade was closing the door for David and caught his shoe in the door, causing it to come off. After trying to get it back on for a few seconds, he decided to climb out of the car. Jade quickly hopped in and took off.

Meanwhile, Davey patiently stood and tried to put his shoe back on himself. It's a water shoe and a bit finicky, so after several minutes he still hadn't got it back on. Without a word he walked over to Jade (still in the car) and handed her the shoe. She in turn tried to get it on him without getting out of the car. Of course, she couldn't quite reach his foot and he wasn't about to lift it on to the hood of the car. So she finally hopped out of the car (holding the shoe) and David hopped in and took off.

They're great little con artists/comedians these two.

Messing with Hornets

Update: In the light of day I was brave enough to see what happened to the hornets. Here's a picture of their nest (it broke in two but was still hanging from the rafters). There were a lot of bodies littering the floor. YUCK!


My mum's house has what we call a solarium on the back of it. When we listed our place, we put a lot of boxes of things in there to store them so that our house would look empty and pretty. Well, with one thing and another, we haven't quite finished unpacking and so those boxes have been sitting in there since January. Last night Andrew went into nesting mode and decided to deal with the boxes.

In doing so, he discovered a MASSIVE hornets nest right by the door. Since the door to the solarium is also only a few feet from the path we take to our suite, AND on the way to mum's deck, we decided we'd better deal with it pronto.

And so tonight, Andrew and I ventured outside...armed with a step ladder, a can of raid and a super powered flashlight, we were going to finish off those nasty creatures. Or so we thought.

No sooner had I shone the flashlight on the nest, then they started coming out. Oh, only a few, I could count four from where I was, but I guess they thought it was day time from the light shining on their nest. Or maybe they knew what we were up to.

Being a big, wussy, chicken (and also, not very good at running these days) I decided to go stand at the front of the house where I could hear Andrew, but had less of a chance of getting attacked. Andrew went back in for the kill.

You stand about six feet away from the nest and squirt the Raid at the hole. The stuff foams up, supposedly plugging the hole so the hornets can't get out, then you get the nozzle into the nest and squirt the living daylights outta them creeps. Well, apparently the force of the squirting knocked the nest away from the wall...allowing some of 'em to escape.

Standing at the side of the house, I heard the clatter of the ladder and flashlight falling, Andrew stumbling and then running up towards me.

Yup, he'd been stung. That picture of him? That's him sitting on the kitchen counter after I applied an ice pack and some baking soda to his wounds. And yes, I gave him a bowl of ice cream for his bravery.

Only now, all the little (and I use the term little loosely) guys that escaped are buzzing angrily outside our door. I know because I was going to get a picture of the nest (from a distance, I'm not completely stupid), and as soon as I opened the door, there they were!! And I swear I can hear them buzzing....we may have to let Andrew's flashlight batteries die, and try to get it back tomorrow. But, just before we went to go fight the hornets I turned the sprinkler on to water my flowers. How am I going to get out to shut that off??

It's Rob's turn for a party!

Rob's birthday is on Wednesday (my due date) so today we had a party for him. Yes, our family (well, me. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I make them come) likes to party.

Because it's so close to my due date, and because it's so hot out, we didn't have as elaborate a party as we did for Dave. Even though it's Rob's BIG YEAR this year. Luckily Rob is a nice guy and didn't feel slighted.

We had a great dinner of couscous, mediteranean rice pilaf, greek potatoes, pitas and tzatziki, some maui ribs and chicken (or chick'n for those who don't eat meat!) with raspberries and icecream for dessert as well as these delicious italian cookies Alexis and Dave brought. MNNN. It was yummy.

After dinner (when everyone's tummies allowed), we beat up another pinata.





Davey was being quite the encourager. Here he is yelling "YAY" for Jadey's attempts at breaking the pinata open.



David and Jade took a break to play in the sandbox. They were both sluggin pretty hard at that thing, so they probably needed to regain their strength!



That thing was so hard to break, we finally called out the big guns. Rob looks like he's posing here, but he's actually making sure he's using the right technique.

Then Dave tried again.

FINALLY Rob got the pinata open and all the great goodies spilled everywhere. Zellers has a great sale on toys right now by the way. Instead of tons of candy, we were able to have planes, cars, bubbles, and water balls. Awesome!

Rob was pretty quick to snatch up his car. Then again, he is the birthday boy!!!


This is him after flying his plane off the clubhouse.

I guess there was a little bit of candy. Here's Dave helping Davey get his smarties out of the box. Mnnnnnn! Thanks uncle Dave!!

And of course, we had to have birthday cake. Happy Birthday Rob! Hope you have a GREAT day Wednesday!!