Mod Mischief

This blog has pretty quiet for the last little while. I've been busy with work and other commitments, but mostly I've been dealing with another pregnancy. Some women love being pregnant, but I am not one of them . For me, it's months of being tired, nauseous and generally miserable. But now I can forget about all of that, because another adorable little boy has joined our family. Arriving in a rush, 5 weeks premature just like his big brother, Lennox made his grand entrance early on a Saturday morning, weighing an impressive 6 pounds 13 ounces (that's a lot for a preemie!). Fortunately, Chris was in town this time and did a great job supporting me through the labour and looking after everything while Lennox and I were in the hospital. Despite having gone through this all before, we're only slightly more prepared than last time, and have been slowly settling in to life as a family of four. It's definitely more hectic dealing with a toddler in a...

This funny guy has been keeping our lives interesting for a year now! After his unexpectedly early entry into the world , it seems like it's just been one adventure after another, but Chris and I are so lucky to have such a happy, easy going kid. Most of the time Axel makes this parenting thing look pretty easy.

Today is the last day of my maternity leave. Somehow it feels like its been forever and yet almost no time at all since that crazy day when I was cleaning up my desk . I'm excited to be going back to work but also a little sad to be missing out on all the fun times Chris and Axel are going to have together during the day. This weekend Chris and I celebrated the 7th anniversary of our first date. We were down in BC, as we managed to add some time with my family on to a medical trip. Axel needed to be fitted for a helmet in Vancouver to correct a flat spot on his head, so he'll be sporting some stylish headgear in his photos for the next 6 months. Between teething and coming down with a bit of a cold, Axel hasn't been totally his usual happy self over the last few days. But it's still going to be pretty tough to say goodbye to this smiley little baby tomorrow morning.

Axel is 16 weeks old today! He's been babbling and all smiles lately. While he's always been a good baby, these days Chris and I really appreciate how Axel is sleeping through the night and showing so much personality when he's awake. At 14 pounds, he's still little for his age, but he's catching up quick! I'm going to need a new set up for his weekly photo soon since he barely fits in the frame.     If you want to follow Axel's weekly pictures more closely, I take his picture every Saturday and usually add it to this Flickr album the same day.

Warning: This post is all about diapers. If that's not your thing, you might want to skip it. I promise there will be more craft and costume related posts coming soon. I was pretty sure I wanted to go the cloth diapering route since before I was pregnant, but Chris took some convincing. Fortunately, many of our friends have gone with cloth diapers and talking to them helped bring Chris over to my side. One of those awesome friends suggested that we look into renting newborn sized diapers. After some googling, I found a fantastic newborn diaper rental service in Whitehorse: Eco Cheeky . Isabel, who runs Eco Cheeky, was extremely helpful and I can't recomend her service enough! Eco Cheeky's Newborn Diaper Package One of the best perks of renting newborn diapers is that you get the opportunity to test out different kinds of cloth diapers to figure out what you like best before buying your baby a full set. The package we got from Eco Cheeky had five different ...

We finally finished our baby announcement/thank you cards! Looks like this is what folks will be getting instead of Christmas cards this year. the rockets on the mobile kind of look like squid, but I'm ok with that The image of Axel on the front of the card is done up to look like a blue print and we tried to make the pop-up nursery on the inside similar to Axel's own robots and rocket ships themed room. The picture on the card was taken when Axel was only two weeks old. He's grown so much since then! He wore the same onesie for his weekly photo this weekend and the difference is incredible. He's doubled his weight since we brought him home from the hospital!

My mom brought Axel this cute Halloween stuff when she came to visit us Even though we kept our Halloween pretty low key this year, we still had a lot of fun.   We decorated the house with t he Zero ghost dog and Oogie Boogie Man I made last year . One new addition was a teal pumpkin sign that Chris painted. Have you heard of the Teal Pumpkin Project ? Displaying a teal pumpkin is a way to show that you have non-food treats available for kids with allergies or special diets. We handed out little tubs of Play-doh and toy whistles along with candy and it was a huge hit with the trick-or-treaters who came to our door. Our little pumpkin Originally, I wasn't sure if I'd have to work my costume around a pregnant belly, so there was no grand plan for this year. A jack-o-lantern costume came with some second hand clothes we got recently from kijiji, so even though it was meant for a baby twice his size, Axel dressed up as a little pumpkin. Chris and I raided our ...

Friday was officially my last day of work, but I still had a bunch of loose ends to tie up so I was planning on going in over the weekend to clean off my desk and wrap stuff up. Chris was out of town for a wedding and I was looking forward to having the weekend to get stuff done around the house before we jumped back into the kitchen renovations. I remember thinking on Saturday morning how great it was that I would have the next month to focus on getting everything ready for our baby since we were so unprepared. Like many mornings over the last 7 months, Saturday started with me eating breakfast and then promptly throwing it up. I was feeling pretty miserable about still dealing with morning sickness at that point, and without Chris to complain to, I turned to facebook for a little sympathy. I really should have known better than to write "the baby can't get here soon enough" when Chris was halfway across the country. Sure enough, I was about to wrap up for the ...

While I'm still dealing with morning sickness, I'm feeling the best that I have all pregnancy. I think the three weeks I took off work in August really helped me catch up on sleep and recharge. We've been taking weekly photos to document the growth of my baby bump. I love how you can see the seasons changing and the progress we've made on the house while the baby grows. I feel huge and awkward, and I'm quickly approaching 200lbs, but even with less than 2 months to go, I must not look that pregnant because some people are still surprised when I tell them!

I was recently reading a friend's blog post about how fabulous her pregnancy has been and I got really upset. So far, for me, being pregnant has been far from fabulous. I'm sick to my stomach. Calling it morning sickness is terribly misleading. For the last few months I've been sick in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings and sometimes in the middle of the night. Vomiting is actually not so bad compared to the more frequent painful dry heaving or the almost constant nausea. I'm too fat for my clothes. I already couldn't fit into my normal pants early in the first trimester. Admittedly, some of that was probably some Yukon winter weight, but mostly I'm blaming the baby. Trying to get dressed in the morning was frustrating and I hated the thought of going out in public in the only pants in my closet that fit, frumpy sweat pants. I'm not getting anything done. I'm so tired and lazy the majority of my spare time is spent lying on the...

I have a new appreciation for mothers. Pregnancy really sucks! Bravo to all the women who have made it through it! 14 weeks Today Chris made me breakfast and got me some pretty flowers to put in the pots on the front porch. We also started to prepare the outside of the house for painting.  We don't know why part of the back of the house is covered in plywood instead of siding The paint is currently in really rough shape. Chris used a power washer to start to remove the worst of the peeling paint. Ultimately, we'd like to replace the siding but until then we are going to do our best to clean it up. what we're dealing with

Chris and I have exciting news to share: we're having a baby! It's a little unexpected (turns out it only takes once!), but we're really excited about this new adventure. Unfortunately, my pregnancy hasn't been much fun yet. They really shouldn't call it morning sickness when I'm nauseous and vomiting all day and night. At least this part should be over soon!