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Life as of January 2009 - part 1

5th January, 2009 - Posted by karen -

So here we are. It has been approximately 6 months since I last did a blog post! This Christmas we were very fortunate to have a break between Dec 24 and Jan 5^th so I was able to catch up on a lot of things I needed to take care of. Finally, I feel like my life is more under control. For over 2 years, it has been one thing after another. As you know, in October 2006 my mother passed away suddenly. After I returned from Alberta I had a lot of things to take care of for her estate, including the sale of her condo. By the time that got sorted out, I was on maternity leave waiting for Evelyn to be born. Once Evelyn was born our lives were totally turned upside down. There were problems breastfeeding, getting her to take a bottle, and convincing her to eat solid food, which carried into the fall of 2008. We visited Alberta twice in 2007, once in August to bury my mother’s ashes and again in December to visit for Christmas. After we returned from Christmas, we started apartment hunting and found a place right away. We moved in January in total chaos, not having enough time to even pack boxes. We had to buy the refrigerator, stove, washer and dryer for the new apartment, and as if that wasn’t enough, we also bought our car in the first half of January. I had also sprained my ankle and had recently returned to work so we were pretty worn out. I also had a root canal in January and we had the 2^nd worst winter in recorded Montreal history, which meant digging the car out of 1 foot + snowbanks twice a week. By the time spring came, I discovered by taxes became particularly complicated and I had to scramble to get things sorted out at the last minute. During the summer of 2008, we did quite a bit of travelling, including visiting Quebec city with Dan’s parents, a road trip to Ontario, and few day trips with my Dad when he visited. In September I went to a conference in The Netherlands (for a week - the longest I have left Evelyn!) and then in October Dan and I went on a trip to Paris. So here we are – January 2009 already.

I think all of you who read by blog know that I am pregnant again. We are expecting a boy, due May 5^th! We are very happy about this. On top of everything else in 2008, I also had two miscarriages, which was particularly difficult for us. We had actually decided to wait and try again (in a few years) the week before we found out I was pregnant this time. So far everything has been fine and we are in the middle of making plans for his arrival. In November we moved Evelyn to a toddler bed. The transition took a bit of work because toddler beds are not particularly common in Canada and we ended up purchasing it on-line. For the first few weeks Evelyn wasn’t too sure about it and she fell out twice, but now she is used to it and likes the freedom of being able to get out of bed when she wants. It’s just as well, since she jumps so hard on her crib mattress I am worried she will break it! We have also moved her to a booster seat so that the other car seat it available for the new arrival. Finally, we think we might work on weaning her. Right now she has 1 bottle of milk just before bed. She hasn’t been too interested in drinking milk from a cup and doensn’t drink from sippy cups (she just wants to play with them and take off the lids) so we will see about that. It has to be something she will be ready for, and we are willing to wait as long as it takes.

Dan has helped me update Wordpress and we have been fighting some major comment problems (I would receive up to 300 unwanted attempted comments on by blog each day). As you can see, I am trying a new theme. Not sure about it yet, maybe some tweaking is still needed.