Week 1 Accessorize

The challenge this week was to choose a variety of accessories and plan outfits around them.  I love accessories,  but I had a hard time getting much of a variety together. Belts just don't fit anymore and it's too cold to take out any of my pretty summer shoes. I don't have too much in the way of hats either,  especially for colder weather.  I did my best...

Monday
I wore one of my favourite ponchos.  I bought this in Cork many years ago,  I love the colours.

I wore my favourite maternity jeans and a purple top to match. 

Tuesday
I wore a grey ribbon headpiece.  I bought this little number two years ago in Hong Kong.  It's very Hong Kong in style but I don't think I fully pull off Hong Kong fashion with this one!

I wore a pink lace maternity top with a grey cardigan and my ever faithful maternity leggings,  grey. 

Wednesday
I wore a blue and orange head scarf. I bought this at Zellar's across the road just before it closed down.  I love wearing headscarves.  Great for bad hair days!

With this outfit I wore an orange top and blue cardigan along with blue leggings. 

Thursday
I wore a beautiful green necklace and earring set, a gift from my dear friend Guinevere.

With this outfit,  I wore all brown,  including my trusty brown leggings! 

Friday
I wore a lovely floral necklace that I bought many years ago in Cork.  This necklace feels very summery to me.  I feel like I'm trying to remind the weather of what season it is by wearing this!

I wore a white maternity top and jeans to match this accessory. 

Saturday
I wore a colorful hairband today.  No idea where this came from.  I think my mother may have given it to me at some point. Béibhinn decided to join me for this photo,  she also decided to join us in bed for the rest of the night...

I wore a purple top and brown leggings this day. 

Sunday
I think this might be my favourite outfit this week.  My parents took a trip to China this year and bought me this lovely handbag.  I'm not great for switching out my handbags,  I kind of stick with the same boring black one most of the time.  A challenge like this makes me use beautiful accessories like this handbag.  I think a nice handbag can really make an outfit.

I wore my favourite maternity dress,  black,  with a deep pink under tube. 

Next week is all about colour.  I love colour so I'm looking forward to mixing and matching my clothes a bit more.

Pregnancy update
I think my bump looks much neater than it did with Béibhinn. Still no idea of it's a boy or a girl,  really don't feel qualified to guess. Baby's head is still down and s/he's facing the right way. My doctors seem quite happy with me. Still a few weeks to go but praying for this baby to come early so we can manage a natural birth!

April Style

In the last month as we waited for baby 2's arrival,  I decide to try another style challenge.  It keeps me from wearing the same tracksuit pants every day or just staying in my pjs all day long.  It's also a bigger challenge when massive like me!  Below are the guidelines for this month's challenge.  It's a week by week challenge so I'll post week by week if I think of it :-D

Hebrides Revival

I can be organised at times, I know that's hard to believe.  One of the things I like to do BEFORE baby arrives is get the birth announcement as ready as I can (not knowing the gender, weight, length, date of birth). I usually write an explanation of the names we've chosen to send to family after the baby's born so I make these in advance, one for a boy and one for a girl, we're ready whatever happens!
Anyway while doing a little online research for info on one of the names we've chosen, I came across this wonderful video, a reminder of what the Lord did in the Hebrides in the the 1950s.  It's a lovely video, hope you'll enjoy it:

32 weeks and counting..

Well I'm 32 weeks pregnant now and just counting down the weeks to baby #2. For two weeks in February/March we had Grandma come to stay and help us get more organising and preparation done before the baby gets here. I've started non-stress tests twice a week and will continue to do these until B-day. We're still really praying that we can avoid another c-section and have this baby naturally. Because it's such a short time since Béibhinn's birth they won't induce me so I will need to go into labour naturally as soon as possible.  My ob would rather have the baby born at 38 weeks but I'm hoping to hold her off for a few weeks in the hopes that I will go into labour naturally. 

Béibhinn had her very first bout of sickness this past week.  I decided to join the fun and get sick too (the third time with this nasty cold this pregnancy). Poor Béibhinn was very sick! She had croup and laboured breathing.  I spent a few nights on the floor in her bedroom, she only wanted Mama the whole time.  She was so sweet and cuddly the whole time she was sick. I'm so glad to see her improving however.  She's sleeping so much better and eating us out of house and home again. I'm also very thankful that on her sickest day (and my sickest day) Andrew was working from home and was able to watch her while I slept. And boy, have I done a lot of sleeping this past week!  Not only am I sick but I'm feeling really exhausted at this point.
I'm feeling really uncomfortable and my back is hurting big time.  I don't remember feeling so uncomfortable with Béibhinn, but this pregnancy has just been completely different to my pregnancy with Béibhinn.  Up until now I was ignoring all of the exercises and tips that we learned in our Bradley classes in preparation for Béibhinn's birth. I think I was so deflated by having a c-section after all of that preparation that I'm just fed up and don't want to bother.  Now, however I'm finding that a lot of the Bradley exercises and tips, like not sitting on a the sofa, are the only thing that helps relieve some of the discomfort I've been feeling.

I'm also trying to get some of my knitting projects finished! I'm really hoping to get this blanket finished that I'm knitting for the baby.  I also have two soakers that need finishing.  I was hoping to knit some more but I think that this will be enough!  If I want to knit a blanket for each of my babies then I'm going to have to get started much earlier in the pregnancy in future!

The brain is also beginning to fail me these days.  Last night totally forgot about my non stress test, I'm really hoping that some day somewhere some of my brain cells will grow back and I'll feel like a new woman again!  Until then,don't expect too much of me :)

Béibhinn and Mummy recover in bed

Hanging out with Grandma

Lá Féile Pádraig

 

Cyril Noel Flood, Dear Pastor, Mentor and Friend

This week we said farewell to a man who has had a profound influence on my life and, even in the short few years that he knew him, Andrew's life too. We're so glad that he got to meet Beibhinn this summer and a little bit sad that he won't get to meet baby#2. Dear Noel, we will miss you. We are so thankful for your life and ministry. A life and ministry that has, and will have in the future, far reaching effects. We rejoice as we know you are with the Lord and we look forward to seeing you soon!

Old Habits Die Harder

Yet again it's been a while since I blogged. We're now 27 weeks pregnant and really looking forward to welcoming baby 2 to our home. Even more excited this time because we're actually not moving immediately after the birth. That means that this time we'll have the opportunity to actually get our home really ready for the baby before s/he gets here :)
I've found that this pregnancy had been very different to the last one, based on the evidence of every old wife out there, this means that I'm expecting a blue eyed blonde haired boy with a thick Scottish highlands accent... :D
Anyhow, one of the very different elements to this pregnancy has been energy levels. I have days where I'm bursting with energy! And this has been wonderful especially as we prepare for #2's arrival.  With some wonderful advice from my sister in law I've done some serious organising, especially of my kitchen. I'm really loving it and finding my home so much easier to manage. I'm even finding it easier to organise meals and groceries. I'm even able to focus a bit more on healthier eating. On this note I'm going to share some of my favourite shelves with you :)

Fridge trays with labels (very teacher of me :))

Grains, labelled.

Bottom shelf of our bookshelf is Beibhinn's area, she loves pulling out her books and toys.

All the wonderful fruits and veggies that I bought at the farmer's market, yum!

The Marks of Revival are Not Easily Lost

This is not a typical blog post.  Not that my blogs are very uniform but this is something that struck me tonight and that I really want to share with anyone who cares to read.

Tonight Andrew, Béibhinn and I went to the opening ceremony of the Christkindl Market and the turning on of the lights in Victoria Park in Kitchener.  I was expecting a fun festive night in our city. Maybe a bit of Santa here with maybe a nod in the direction of a Christmas Carol or two. I love Christmas and was looking forward to a bit of snow and lights and Christmas spirit.  Living in Canada, a country which prides itself in "inclusiveness" (which in my experience usually means excluding God) I was not expecting the night that we had.  Yes there was Christmas lights, crafts for children, yummy food and a "toy soldier" on stilts, but the main focus of the night was on the true meaning of Christmas.  There were carols, and only carols, sung by the Philharmonic Choir.  There were donkeys, Mary and Joseph and Shepherds.  There was no Santa, just St. Nicholas soberly dressed in brown and there were prayers! Prayers! In public! It was a celebration of Christmas!
Now I learned that it was done this way because it is a German tradition and apparently it is done the exact same way every year in Munich as well.  I know that most of the people there are not being impacted by the Gospel and are there really to celebrate German culture rather than our precious Saviour who was sent to earth to die to pay the price  for our sins.  What struck me, however, was that if we had gone there tonight to celebrate Irish culture there would have been a very different scene.  Celebrating German culture means celebrating the  true meaning of Christmas.  And why is it this way?  Because German culture is rooted in a spectacular movement of the Holy Spirit that took place there many years ago.  This revival is commonly known as "The Reformation".  The Holy Spirit opened the eyes of many German people during this time and revealed to them the precious understanding of Salvation through faith alone.  Germany has gone through a lot since The Reformation and today it seems that it's a country that's more about money and economics than about the Gospel.  But you know what I learned tonight, what excited me more than anything else?  The marks of revival are not easily lost.  When the Holy Spirit does a work in a country like He did in Germany during the Reformation, it is EXTREMELY difficult to shake off those marks.  They are etched into the culture of that country.  My prayer for Germany and for this city of Kitchener is that God would do a great work there once again, that the truth of Salvation by Grace alone would ring out once more and that Christ would truly be glorified.  Now that will be a day to celebrate!

Andrew and Béibhinn with their Christkindl candles

 

Waterloo Philharmonic Choir singing by the clock tower in Victoria Park

Cloth Nappies on the go

The big question with cloth nappies and cloth wipes is the travel question.  Should you just stick disposables on when you're going out?  If you're comfortable changing and dealing with cloth on the go how many days are you willing to go without being able to launder them?  What about cloth wipes? Is that just too much work? How do you wet your wipes on the go? What about when baby is on solids on the poop is nasty! There's no way to hide that smell!

I've faced these questions many times and I've done different things in different situations.  A lot of it depended on where we were going, how long we were going, the availability of laundry services etc...

Day Trips
I've never had a problem bringing cloth on day trips or quick trips outside the home.  I've also been happy to use cloth wipes in these situations.  A few important accessories:
A wet bag (one with a carbon tag is nice but not necessary for a day trip)
Either pre-soaked wipes in a wipe holder, or a spray bottle with dry wipes.  I love the pre-soaked wipes now because they're just easy to grab and use wherever you are.  Don't forget to add a couple of drops of lavender and or tea tree oil to the water make your wipes antibacterial and smell good. The spray bottle is handy for those less organised days where you just didn't get around to pre-soaking a bunch of wipes.
Extra covers and extra nappies-you never know!
When you are dealing with nasty poop I strongly recommend using liners when you're out, flushable liners preferably. I only started using my liners when the poop became nasty. I found that the breast milk poop was not an issue at all, the pee smelled worse!

Weekend Trips and longer
This all depends on where you're going.  If I'm going somewhere that I know laundry facilities will be available then I have no problem bringing cloth nappies with me.  I bring the usual essentials with me as listed above and sometimes I'll bring my own laundry detergent if I'm going to be away for a while, I don't want to mess up my nappies using unsuitable detergent over and over.  Recently we went to our in-laws and I just used their detergent because it was just one wash.
If the trip takes  you to a place where there are no laundry facilities or where there are a few days without laundry facilities then whether or not you want to use cloth is really up to you.
Recently on a trip to Ireland I just brought disposables with me on the plane as we were on a 7 hour flight and we were landing in Dublin airport which is 4 hours from Cork, I knew it would be a little while before we got to laundry facilities, plus a baby on a plane is enough work and space is limited enough without dealing with cloth nappies.  You can however get large sized wet bags with carbon tags that are really effective in containing the smell.  I would be happy to use something like this on a camping trip or some trip where we're not taking a 7 hour flight with a baby but where laundry facilities aren't readily available.  Another downside to using cloth nappies over a few days where laundry facilities are not available is space.  You'll need to bring a lot of nappies with you, and you may just not have the space.  Again, it's really up to you.

Another more eco-friendly, pocket-friendly solution to travelling with cloth nappies is the hybrid nappy.  One of the many things that annoys me about disposables is that they always come in big packs (I really don't need 24 nappies for one short trip) and they come in different sizes, so you feel under pressure to use up the nappies before the baby grows out of them and I would rather use just what I need and not waste money on excess nappies.  Hybrid nappies are the answer! There are three types of hybrid nappies that I know of; gdiapers, charlie banana and flips.  These are basically nappy covers with cloth inserts to soak up the pee and catch the poop.  The beauty of these nappies is that they are usually one size, the inserts are one size and you can also purchase disposable inserts which are also one size! And they work wonderfully! So no more buying a huge batch of disposable nappies that I won't need, instead for those times when I am on the go without any laundry facilities (or even if I don't want to burden a babysitter with cloth then I simply slip in the disposable insert instead of the cloth.  I will never need to buy another Huggies, and that makes me glad!

Old Habits Die Hard

I've been struggling. For a long time.  I have a lot of very bad housekeeping habits. I'm messy.  I leave things lying around.  I'm easily distracted by...anything.  And unless someone is breathing down my neck (like a boss or a mean scary husband -which I don't seem to have), I'll let things slide.  And I find excuses for everything!
When I have a new space I love setting it up and organising things.  My Montessori instinct kicks in, and I have a place for everything and everything in its place.  I did this when Andrew and I returned from our honeymoon to our first home together, our lovely little apartment in West LA.
However once I started work and life got busy, the apartment wasn't so tidy...it was okay, but our bedroom became the dumping ground.  My excuse was work.
Then I got pregnant.  I took the summer off work and I started to improve the house a little bit, but I went back to work and then we moved.  I finished work and tried to tidy our new place a bit but then we realised that we were moving to Canada-what was the point? We're moving, I'm huge and I'm tired. So that apartment went to pot.  Then Béibhinn was born...and we moved countries...and I never had time to organise anything...and I had a tiny baby...and our new house remained in a state of permanent pot...
And I'm not planning on going back to work, I'm planning on being a full time mum and housewife and I'm pregnant again and breastfeeding and I'm hoping to have more than two children and I'm pretty sure I'll have ample excuses for many years to have a messy house in a state of permanent pot...
So things need to change.  I need to be a decent housewife, if not a great housewife, I need to kick these habits.
So three weeks ago I determined to develop a new habit and to give myself two to three weeks to develop this habit, one habit at a time.  And I've chosen a time in my life when I have MANY excuses not to do these things. I have a nine month old baby, I'm breastfeeding, I'm in my first trimester, I'm exhausted, I have morning sickness,  Béibhinn has stinky cloth nappies, I have diabetes. So many excuses, but I am determined with the help of the Holy Spirit to change my ways and to develop one new habit at a time.  The past three weeks I started with making my bed every morning (yes my bad habits are many and my house is VERY messy).

I think I'm there. I do my best to make the bed AS SOON as I get up in the morning. This means the bed SHOULD be made no matter how busy my day will be.  Andrew has really loved this new development and he said that having one thing in a room done makes it feel like the room has been taken care of.  I don't fuss too much over the bed. I just make sure it's presentable.  Here is my newly made bed this morning - woohoo!

This week I've moved on to habit #2.  Making sure our dining table is clean and tidy after each use.  This is will be a habit I will work on for the next two to three weeks.
Here's hoping and praying that over the next months I will slowly but surely develop simple habits that lead to a generally clean home and a happier wife, hubs and baby.

Life Goes On

Today Béibhinn is 9 months old and I'm 9 weeks pregnant.  That's right baby #2 is coming this May, God willing.  I'm feeling kinda ugh today so I'm camped out in my bed resting while Béibhinn is rolling around on the bed beside me just playing with whatever she can get her hands on.  She's such a happy little girl as long as somebody is within sight, she'll play away until she gets tired or hungry.  This is such a blessing right now because at this moment in time I think I'm the sickest I've been since discovering the pregnancy.

Overall I've actually been less sick than I was with Beibhinn, able to eat a much more varied diet and more able to do stuff around the house.  The past couple of days haven't been so great though, I'll be glad to see the back of this first trimester!  I'm also still nursing Béibhinn so I really have to keep on top of my carb intake and make sure I'm eating properly.  Tonight will be an easy night because last night we had our "adopted" students over for hot pot and there's left overs! Woohoo!! I always feel so happy when I don't have to worry about dinner.  Poor Andrew however needs to worry about his own lunch and breakfast these days, I'm not feeling like the greatest wife around at the moment!

With Robin and Andy 

Tomorrow Andrew is going on a fly fishing trip with a friend from church; Ryan Clark (he's related to the owners of Clark's shoes by the way :P). His wife Christina's going to come spend the day with me. I'm looking forward to having some adult company-yay!

Nappies and Bums

Oh how I love my cloth nappies.  I was trying to figure it out the other day...why do I love it so much? I think I just get such a kick out of saving money and I just love all the new nappies they have out there to make our lives easier!  Anyway I've decided to write a little bit more about my cloth nappy experiences because I seem to learn more and more as Béibhinn gets older and she hasn't even reached a year yet!

Recently Béibhinn has taken off with eating solids. She LOVES her food!  She eats three meals a day including a half cup of oatmeal/porridge for breakfast.  While I'm very happy for her new found love of solids, I've found that solids poop is a whole other kind of poop!  I was very spoiled with 6 months of pure breastmilk poop, then another couple of months of about 80% breastmilk poop.  In the space of a couple of weeks we started getting full on stinky, lumpy, sticky, solids poop!  Did I ever wish I could toilet train her!
At this point I was still using Flat Fold Nappies and Mother-ease Sandy's Fitted Diapers.  Andrew installed a diaper sprayer to our toilet.  This means that every time Béibhinn has a dirty nappy (which is pretty much every time) we need to take the nappy to the toilet and spray the poop off it.  Pros: her nappy bucket never smells too badly and the poop goes where it's supposed to (down the toilet, not in the dump), it makes me clean my toilet bowl more often because I find myself staring at it a couple of times a day. Cons: it's a little bit horrible (quote: Naomi O'Sullivan) and it's just extra work.
Because of this I decided I was done with Flat Fold Nappies.  I figured I was doing enough work washing, drying, stripping and now spraying nappies, having to fold them before putting them on the child was just too much.  I also knew that she was growing out of them and that in a few months she'd be growing out of the Sandy's fitted nappies. It was time to try out some of these new nappies I've been hearing about!

Recently I joined a group on facebook for cloth nappy users in Ireland.  Yes, I know I don't live in Ireland anymore but can't a home sick girl just pretend?  On this group I kept hearing about all kinds of different nappies.  Pocket nappies and flips being the predominate ones.  Also, on our recent trip to Ireland I found myself using disposables on the plane as we traveled to and from Cork.  It made life much easier to use disposables but the cost and the waste annoyed me.  One Sunday during a conversation with a friend of mine she mentioned the cloth nappies that use inserts (flips, gnappies, gdiapers, charlie bananas).  These nappies are known as "hybrid" nappies and they're really cool because they're slim fit and you can use either a cloth or a disposable insert (no need to buy a bunch of disposable nappies -yay!)
So I found a very cool baby shop in Waterloo,(http://www.extraordinarybabyshoppe.com/) and went to check out their hybrid nappies.  I decided to buy some flip nappies.  5 nappy covers, 12 cloth inserts and a packet of 18 disposable inserts all brand new with added tax $160-not bad!
I started using my flips straight away and I love love love them.  They're soft and comfy for Béibhinn, they've great absorption, and they're one size, so they work from newborn to potty! I highly recommend these nappies.  Now I haven't used them on a constantly peeing newborn but I'm pretty confident that they would work really well and it's really easy to just double them up whenever I need to.

One other yucky side affect of Béibhinn's love for solids is a nasty nappy rash.  Coming home from Ireland she was pooping every hour and we couldn't keep up with her! By the time we got home her little bum was red raw and getting worse.  I went to the pharmacist and he recommended mixing some hydrocortizone cream with a stronger nappy cream.  I used this for about 2 weeks and while sometimes the rash seemed to improve, every now and then it would flair up again to the point of bleeding!  I couldn't seem to kick this rash and poor little Bei Bei was very distressed.  Finally I decided to try what a lot of my crunchy mommy friends have been recommending forever: coconut oil.  I was very skeptical, I thought if the hydrocortizone doesn't work why on earth would coconut oil work?  I was desperate though and willing to try anything.  I bought the coconut oil and started using it less than a week ago.  Béibhinn's rash stopped getting worse and now it is slowly but surely clearing up.  I couldn't believe it!  All I can say is, if your baby has a bad rash you've got to give this a go, it's really fantastic!