Month 5

Wrennie is 5 Months old now, and I went and got her weighed and measured again. She is 19 lbs 3 oz and 26 inches long. Yep, 95th percentile again. Just like the garbage bag commercial.."Hefty, hefty, hefty!" Right now she is napping. I have started letting her cry herself to sleep for naps, and it is mostly working. It's still hit or miss for bedtime. But at least she is going to bed earlier at night, around 8pm. We tried really hard to get her off of the 9-10pm bedtime. Time changes can do that to a kid though.

She is also getting better at eating her cereal. It's helping her continue to sleep through the night. And this morning I got a special treat. Not only did she sleep from 8:30pm-5am, but Kenton offered to get up with her and feed her and put her back down again for another couple of hours. And then he went to work. What a sweetheart. She woke up again at 7am when I got up, but a noise must have scared her, so Dad gave her a pre-goodbye cuddle.

As you can see, she was pretty sad. Something about the angle of the picture makes her look huge, like, really long. Sometimes when I rock her, or she has fallen asleep on my shoulder, I look at us together in the mirror and can't believe how massive this baby looks on me.

Wrennie, myself and Cara went to go visit a brand new baby yesterday. She was soooo sweet and sooo tiny...she weighed 6 lbs 13 oz at birth. I held her, and had to keep looking down to make sure she was still in my arms because she felt so light after months of holding my large and in charge child. Although this 5 day old baby is so beautiful and precious, I was so happy to give her back and take home my 5 month old. I don't say that in a rude way, I mean I am afraid of newborns and I don't want to have another one in my care again for a long time! Yes, maybe motherhood was a little rougher at the start than I had anticipated. But I am so excited and feel very lucky to have so many great friends that are also moms around me to talk to and spend time with.

I guess not much else is new with her. We are just gearing up to move....mentally. We haven't actually done anything yet like packing or cleaning. Why clean now? I can just save it for the big clean at the end. And we will be getting all of the boxes from Cam's move into the apartment. We are helping him and Andrea move their stuff in tomorrow. How exciting! Their wedding is coming up really soon. I am planning her party (which I think is going to be a blast) and trying not to think about a speech. Public speaking is scary...I know my Dad is already sweating about it too. Him and I are one in the same.

In my excitement to move, I have been dropping heavy objects onto the floor of Wrennie's room and our room, creating big thumps. It's part of my parting affection towards Bob Dylan downstairs. I get this revengeful gene from my mom. Remember my earlier post about her neighbour problems when I was a baby? I asked her about it the other day, and she filled me in. It was worse than I thought.

Get this, the neighbour's youngest son across the street from my parents had scattered his car parts across their lawn one day. Result: My mom yelling at them to get it all off.

They had also left broken beer bottles across their front sidewalk. Result: My mom telling the parents in that home, and their son was made to come clean it all up.

Another time, my mom woke up in the middle of the night to a scratching sort of sound at the front door. The youngest son was fiddling with the front door lock with toothpicks (to probably try to break in). Result: My mom whipping the door open, (scaring the crap out of said idiot) and screaming at him to go away and threatening to call the police. I think she did many times.

And there were the parties. They would have all- nighter parties that would drive my mom insane. Result: Before caller ID was popular, (she had their phone number) she would call their house at 7am and let it ring until some hungover household member would answer and then she would hang up. And then she would repeat that 5 more times. I LOVE that. I wish I had our neighbours numbers!! That is so funny to me, I sit here laughing just imagining her doing that. That is so her.

But to top it all off, this was all happening at a time when my dad was still working for...oh darn, I can't remember, Dresser? an oil company I think? He was out of town a lot, sometimes for a month or two at a time. So my poor mom was alone when idiot guy was trying to break in, or these parties were going on, and she would have to freak out on them on her own. Scary!

So I guess in comparison I really haven't had it as bad...that is pretty bad!

Nonetheless, Friday night + nice weather = party and loud music tonight. We give up. They win. YOU WIN jerkface neighbours!

P.S. Now anyone can leave a comment on my posts....just a reminder for those of you who still are jumping back to Facebook instead. Just leave it here if it's easier than going from page to page!

Rolling over.

Wrennie rolls over lone way like a pro now. If you put her down on her back, she usually ends up here.

And she will play there for a while. Maybe she finds a toy, or chews on a blanket.

But pretty soon it isn't so fun anymore and she begins to get distressed.

And she lets me know.

And if I keep taking pictures of the whole thing and don't help her right away, she gets depressed. I know. Real nice of me hey? She is just so cute sometimes when she gets sad. I know we will both love when she can roll herself back over. Maybe in a few months...

Cooking Dinner

Jamie Oliver's Roast Chicken and veggies. I make this weekly...or so it feels. I had never, ever roasted any meat in my life until a few months ago. The most I did with meat was bake a chicken breast. I just didn't know it was this easy.

Carrots, onions, garlic, potatoes, and butternut squash. Drizzle the olive oil, sprinkle the salt and pepper.

Nasty. I can't believe I make this meal in all honesty. Cutting the string off the chicken nearly does me in. Suck it up and drizzle chicken with olive oil. Rub it down with s & p. Shove some herbs up it's butt. Wedge the lemon inside after the herbs. Think about how good it will taste and not about how gross it feels right now. Stick the chicken in your roasting pan and put in oven at 400 F for 1 hr 20 min.

In the meantime, eat Borsin cheese and some crackers. My Borsin cheese addiction is all Rachel's fault...and Costco's. They sell two for $7.50 or something like that. Hey, while all this is happening, what is Wrennie doing?

She is pulling her sleepers open while having a nice swing. Obviously not too concerned about what I am doing.

Pull out delicious chicken after given time. Mmmmm....eat it.

Just hanging out.

Wrennie can pull her feet all the way up to her mouth. Now she is chewing on not only her hands, but her toes too!

Dad and Wrennie read This Is My Hair. It's one of my favorites that she has right now.

And this is my pie. I have tried making Jamie Oliver's apple pie. His filling is amazing. His pie crust sucks. I have only succeeded making it once out of 6 times at least. So I went with Michael's Smith's crust recipe instead (Chef At Home) and Jamie's filling- apple and blackberry. As you can see, the crust came out amazing. So it's not just my lack of skill after all...

But why does pie making have to be so messy? I didn't even remember to take a picture of the finished product. I can tell you it was good though, really good. What is the secret to apple pie? Ginger. It's the taste you just can't quite figure out when you eat it but adds that special something.

And Wrennie is still a cereal mess. Can you see that red hair?? Love that.

That has been our week. We are in the midst of paint color decisions, and planning our weekend of moving. We are going for the 14th of May. Our mindset right now is to move as soon as possible and get the hell out of here!! We visited a really cool store called Carbon to get our paint, located downtown. It's all eco-friendly, green products that they sell. They carry Mythic paint, which has zero VOC's, zero Carcinogens which can off-gas in your house for years if it's in your wall paint. I didn't have a clue about any of this until I came across a small article in a design magazine that talked about VOC's. I mentioned the article to Kenton, and he recalled hearing about this particular brand. It's more expensive (what 'green' product isn't?), but if it means no chemicals slowly being released in your air for years to come in your home...it kind of makes sense. We are going with grey in the whole main area (living room, kitchen and hallway) and an aqua blue in our bedroom. We have carefully chose our grey, because if you have seen our current apartment color...our first grey choice didn't come out quite as planned. ("Wow, I love your blue walls!"..."Oh, yeah..thanks.")

We spent the Saturday night that just passed sleeping over at my parents house. We will be spending this Friday night at Kenton's parents. Obnoxious noise from all neighbours on a Friday night is pretty much a guarantee now, so we are avoiding weekends at our place as much as we can until we move.

I told Wrennie she was going to have 2 new playmates soon and she looked at me like this (see above.) Her friend Isla is moving here very very soon, and little Lucy just arrived in the world. Lucy doesn't know it yet, but Wrennie wants to be friends. Who wouldn't want to befriend someone with a hairdo like this?

Fun With Photo Booth

Even though her perfectly normal face can make us all giggle, she is even more entertaining with our computer's Photo Booth option. I was looking like my usual lovely self in the morning and opted out of the photo shoot. Here are my favorites:

Feel free to offer name suggestions on those blanks ones, I was at a loss.

Felix the Cat.

_____.

Zoltron

Couch Potato.

Sponge Bob Square Pants.

______.

_______.

A Bug's Life.

Wrennie's New Face

Wrennie has a new trick. It's her Turtle Face. I made this face to her yesterday, and she copied it! And now when she looks at me, she gives me a smile and then this face. She thinks it's pretty great to be able to do this. She is also liking this spring thing, notice the tank top? One of her favorite articles of clothing these days with only a diaper on.

Quite the nose on this one.

4 & 5 Generations

4 Generations of girls here. Great Grandma Farmer, Grandma Marci, me and Wrennie! We all went out to Leduc today where my Grandma Farmer and Grandma Riehl live to get our pictures of all these generations!

This is Wrennie with Grandma Jeske. We joke that Wrennie is her great grandson, mostly because that is what she tells everyone at the residence she is in where her memory is failing her. She has sons and lots of grandsons in her long-term memory (okay, except for Amber-Lynn and Alyssa) so it is sort of inevitable that she calls Wrennie a boy. It doesn't help that we aren't super big into pink either...

You can see Wrennie is thinking of pulling a lip here. She does that a lot lately. Can you tell she doesn't get out much? My excuse- she is a winter baby, keeping cozy inside. Her and I plan on breathing more fresh air more often this Spring.

Now Wrennie meets Great Great Grandma Riehl! Amazing, she is turning 105 this June! I just love this shirt on Wrennie. Too bad it almost doesn't fit anymore either. 6-12 month size. Good grief. We barely got it on her today!

This has to be one of the most beautiful pictures of Grandma Jeske these days. She is so happy she could nearly cry. It's really something how a little person can bring out so much joy.

5 Generations! Great Great Grandma Riehl, Great Grandma Jeske, Papa, Kenton, and Wrennie. Unfortunately I cut out one of the best parts of the photo...to the right of the photo you can see a bit of a wheelchair where an older gentleman was sitting practically slumped onto the table. Yes, he was fine, just sleepy. Gotta love these places!

Grandma Riehl is so sweet, she even broke out in a smile this afternoon when meeting Wrennie up close. It's a bit hard to see it in that picture above (3rd one from top). She still sits in her chair and "knits", which consists of her licking her thumb and then gathering the afghan on her lap up by little bunches until it is all pulled up on her. Then someone gently pulls it back down and she starts all over again.

We are so glad we got out there today for this. 5 generations all together is pretty rare!

The Binge Blogger

Have you noticed that I don't blog for a week or more, and then once I do it, I blog 5 times in one day? I can't explain it either.

By the way, I am fairly sure that I changed my settings on the blog so that even people that don't have Gmail or a blog themselves can leave a comment. So comment away!

An update on Wrennie's head:

Today we visited the physiotherapist at Lifemark. He basically told me to keep doing what I was doing with her- putting her on the side she doesn't use as much so she turns her head and works those neck muscles! He also gave me a few exercises to do with her to help stretch that muscle in her neck and get things limbered up. But overall, he said it's really not that bad, and he will see us next week.

The Head Shape clinic at the U of A finally sent us a letter saying that she has an appointment May 10 to get assessed. I really hope she doesn't need a helmet, poor thing! But at least they are going to see her now. I will keep you posted on that one too.

Pictures are just so fun, here are some more as of lately:

Wrennie in her "leisure wear" as Kenton's boss says.

Wrennie and Grandpa sleeping. It is inevitable that if she is placed in the nook of Grandpa, given a bottle and the tv softly going in the background, she will fall asleep. It's also inevitable that if I bring her over in one outfit, she will end up in another.

The chubby, cute, and rolly bum that we all love. We need to get this child weighed, I think she grew a ton again!

Grandma came with us to the physio appointment today too.

And Aunty Andrea needed a new Facebook profile picture. So we took a gooder. I know she is thrilled that she wore her Batman t-shirt today too.

A Summer-ish Day

Today we pulled out Wrennie's bathing suit that Grandma got her. She has grown so big that we wondered if it would still fit. See that smile on her face? She loves to be naked.

Hmm...might be a bit snug.

Yep, there we have it. The straps are cutting into her back fat.

Cute bum in a bathing suit.

At least we got a few pictures with it on. If you are having a baby girl, maybe you will find it in a gift bag near you! (Well, after this post, you would know it was a re-gift after all!)

But we can't wait to go swimming!

You May Not Believe It...

We are buying a house. A HOUSE. Since when? Since last weekend or so. Some friends are selling their house and wondered if we would be interested in buying it. We couldn't get approved for as much as they would sell it for, not even close. But it got us looking around. We weren't looking long until we realized there was no way we could afford the down payment without draining every last penny we had.

Ultimately depressed.

But then...Kenton's wonderful, generous parents decided to give us some help, and with that we kept looking at some more houses.

We took a peek at 3 one Saturday. The first was meh. The second was hmmm. And the third was ah no. We kept thinking about the second, I mean, it has a huge insulated, heated garage....hello, perfect shop for Kenton! 3 bedrooms on the main floor, cute little kitchen, sweet backyard, great big basement with a huge laundry room...Not to mention, across the street is a pretty little park, and it's 5 min from Kenton's work and a school, with a new playground.

We could do this.

We are going to buy a house. I am scared. I thought having a baby made you grown up, but buying a house seems even more so. As Kenton pointed out, any teenager can have a baby, but not all can go buy a house. Great perspective, ha.

So we have submitted all of our paperwork, got all of our ducks in a row with the bank, have a lawyer, the whole sha-bang. Today we get the house inspected. If all looks good, we have a house!!!!

I can hardly believe it. This seems to be how we live though- we wait, wait, wait, and then bang! A million things happen in quick succession. (Read my first blog entry if you don't think so).

Kenton is going to be at the house when it is being inspected which is good to me. I was just watching CBC Marketplace (I am addicted to watching online shows) and they had on Mike Holmes, you know, Holmes on Homes, and they were talking about poor house inspections and grow-op houses. Marketplace had 4 random inspectors come into this home (that was already known to have once been a grow-op) and check it out to see if they could catch this big fact, and they all missed the signs!! So, if you know me at all, I am already telling Kenton once he got home all the things he needs to look for because apparently inspectors can be stupid or don't care, and miss these important things. I know he thinks I am paranoid...but he'll be looking now..I know he will..

Now I am sitting here, looking around our place, laughing to myself. This is because the only room in the house that will look "furnished" is Wrennie's room. She will have her crib, her vanity (no idea what you call that thing) and the glider in there. I guess that's what happens when you live in an apartment and move to a house. I mean, our bed currently sits on the floor! But it didn't matter in here, or look weird. And our couch that matches nothing. Oh boy. Someone lend me all of your design-on-a-budget magazines please!

How to Make a Sweet Little Bonnet

You will have to go out and buy the pattern yourself, sorry, unless you are skilled and amazing and can just guess and get everything right without one. The pattern is Simplicity #3840.

The bonnet you want is F. You may want the others, I don't know why, but they are there too.

The hardest part of this whole mess is choosing your fabrics, and what a great dilemma it is! The cute possibilities are endless. The more you sew, the bigger the variety of fabric you have to choose from in your piles of leftovers which is perfect for this pattern because you don't need much. Or just run to Fabricland and find some discount cotton fabric cheap.

Now cut out your pattern. I am making a small size because, again, this is a gift for a new baby this spring. So she will probably wear this size for the summer.

You will need to cut 2 of the main piece (left) and 1 of the top piece (right). You could use the patterned fabric as the main, but why? It's so much cuter this way!

Pin them. If you are like me, you have tried to cut corners and not pin something because it seemed "faster". It will only end bad. Not like I have ever done that though.

And don't forget to cut out one piece of interfacing with your main pattern piece. You want that stiffness in your bonnet otherwise it will flop on her face.

Iron your interfacing onto the wrong side of one of your main pieces. The shiny side of the interfacing goes toward the fabric to stick them together.

Important to note: When you go to iron these two together, flip it over so your fabric piece is what touches your iron, otherwise you will have a nasty mess on your iron. It's seriously not good, I nearly did it one time, followed by a few #$*@ 's. That actually happens more than you would think.

Use a fabric glue to stick your top piece to the main piece. I have this one, for no good reason other than it was the cheapest at Fabricland. It's annoying to apply, so I don't really recommend it, but I just used a lip brush from my makeup brush collection. No loss really, I am wasn't a lipstick wearer to begin with.

Put your top piece onto your main piece like so and admire how good they look together!

Choose a cute complimenting (or contrasting) color of thread. I like this one because there is juts a hint of this color in the patterned fabric I chose.

And using a tight zig-zag stitch, test it on a scrap of fabric. I do because I am a rookie, and have also screwed this up many times by not having all my settings correct on the machine before I started. Yes, $*@#'s were said, it's why I sew by myself.

I go slow, these bumpy parts are tricky.

Go around the whole thing.

Lookin' good. Backstitch at the end. But of course you knew that already.

Put the right side of your unused, second piece of main panel onto the right side of the other main panel. Basically, it's inside out. You will be turning it right-side out soon.

Make sure to leave several inches open once you have sewn around so you can turn it.

Give that wrinkly thing a good ironing and then stitch the opening shut by either slip-stitching it closed (which I can't do) or use your machine to stitch it shut. The latter is not as neat and discreet, but you have to do what you can.

Then pin the side up and put a dab of glue to hold your ribbon in place.

Grab some thread and a needle and sew on the buttons of your choice on each side.

Then take a picture on it with the cutest little model you can find!

Awwww...look at those sweet chubby cheeks peeking out from underneath.