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the resolverator

18th February, 2007 - Posted by karen -

This has been one heck of a week. I spent most of last weekend tidying up in our place and we both had a rather nice relaxing time. When I went to work on Monday there was an innocent-looking fax sitting on the desk near the fax machine with some documents pertaining to the condo sale. “Sign here” some of them said. Well that’s all good. “Get a witness to sign here” said some others - well no problemo, I have an office full of coworkers who can do that. But some of them also said “get the witness to swear an affadavit before a notary” and others “get a notarized signature here” and then I started to panic. I was panicking because the last page said “please return these before Friday” (the closing date for the sale of the condo). After a mad scramble I was able to get an appointment with my notary (yes, I have a notary now) for Tuesday afternoon. I got the forms signed, witnessed, norarized, photocopied and mailed so they arrived in Alberta by Wednesday morning. From what I hear the sale is finished, so that’s all done. One issue resolved.

Tuesday evening we had a tour of the hospital. There were a lot of people there - I would easily guess 100 couples and I think it was more people than the staff were expecting. The tour consisted of a presentation and then visiting the birthing centre and unit. Although it was fairly time consuming (2 hours total) it was fairly informative and quite reassuring for me. I found all of their standard policies to be in line with what I think, which is great.

Wednesday night we had our prenatal class as usual. It was Valentine’s day but we had to postpone our meal until Friday. It was a class about breastfeeding so we got to see a video with lots of different breasts - big ones, small ones, squirty ones, engorged ones … all sorts. Not our usual Valentine’s day fare, that’s fur sure! The weather was starting to royally suck at this point - very cold, windy and snowy. Thursday I had my doctor’s appointment and the weather was awful. To give you an idea how bad it was, I usually wait for an hour at the doctor’s office if I turn up at the scheduled time. This Thursday I came about 40 minutes late and there was nobody in the waiting room. This is an office that has 5 doctors in it. By that time, my doctor was the only one still there! Anyway, everything is still on track. Kicky is head-down (a good thing to be at this point) and will hopefully stay that way. She is more “punchy” rather than “kicky” now since there isn’t so much room for her to extend her legs, but on the rare occasion that she does it is surprisingly painful, especially since they are right under my ribs. She has very strong leg muscles. She’s very responsive now and if Dan talks to her or we touch where her feet are, her hands move around a lot (I wonder if it tickles?).

I had another breastfeeding class Thursday evening so Dan and I went out for supper and then I trekked my way to the hospital for the class. Again, long but informative.

Friday was break time. Dan and I made steak, battered shrimp and asparagus. Dan invented this amazing steak marinade:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tabelspoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Worchestershire sauce
1 small clove of garlic, sliced
a few slices of ginger
6-10 parsley leaves
freshly ground salt and pepper to taste
It was really good.

Today we finally resolved the car seat issue. We went to le Carrousel du Parc which is a great store specializing in car seats and strollers. After speaking with the very friendly and knowledgeable lady, we ended up choosing a Britax Marathon, which is the best convertible car seat available in North America. So no more worrying about that - Kicky has a safe way to get home from the hospital now and we can travel without worrying about trying to borrow or rent a seat. I was really impressed with the store - although it is small they have a great selection and it wasn’t crowded and busy like the other stores I have visited. They also rent car seats for people who don’t need to buy - an infant car seat can be rented for only $80 for 6 months. If we didn’t know we would be travelling this year, this would have been a great solution too. We also put a McLaren Stroller on order. We won’t need it until she is 3-6 months old so there is no rush to get it.

We took the bus back to Place des arts metro and I stopped in to St. Viateur bagel - my first time going there. It was awesome. Also we happened to be at the corner of Parc and St. Viateur at around 11 AM on a Saturday and it was quite an interesting and new experience for me to see so many members of the Hasidic Jewish community going to temple.