Preparing for Earl (and any that follow)

We suddenly realized this weekend that while we have the food and diaper supply we need in the event of a major hurricane making a direct hit here, we didn't have things like matches and bottled water, so we've spent the last couple of days finishing off our emergency supply kit. It was complete until last year when the nor'easter and Ida combined to cause major flooding, and then we ended up with some of our supplies being destroyed. I'm pretty sure we have most of what we need now.

We're working on getting the back yard tidied now. We have a lot of loose fence pieces, as Justin is working on disassembling some fencing so it can be turned into a new fence, so those will all have to be moved into a safer location. There are some other odds and ends that need to be moved as well.

Right now it looks like we're just going to get the edge of Earl, but the projected path keeps going back and forth. We have been in the potential path three times in the last 24 hours. Right now we're directly under the edge of the 5 day cone, so we'll see if that changes anytime soon.

To make it better, Fiona is a tropical storm, and is quickly catching up to Earl. I somewhat wonder if Earl will absorb Fiona and become even larger, or if we're going to have two hurricanes come one after the other, as Fiona's projected path has changed quite dramatically in the last 12 hours!

Other than weather news... Elias is 2 months old, and has met all of his 2 month and I think some of the 3 month milestones, I think. He finally started lifting his head off the floor when on his tummy... and at the same time started pushing his chest off the floor as well! He loves to talk to anyone and anything that will listen... makes it very useful to have stuffed toys around, because if it has a face he talks to it! He's just full of smiles all day, and we love getting those big grins out of him. It's hard to catch them on camera though!

And, Justin's on vacation this week, so we're spending the time doing family activities (beach, park, potentially a museum or two) and getting ready for what appears to be a major pickup in the hurricanes/tropical storms in the Atlantic. :)

She wants to be like Daddy...

It seems no matter what Justin is working on lately, Rebecca thinks she should be assisting him! He rotated his tires at the end of February, and she toddled along after him trying to help every chance she got.


She helped with the jacks...


and thought she should help with the lug wrench as well. :)

Justin will get up with Rebecca to let her play for a little while in the morning while I get a little more sleep. This is usually because she wakes me up at least once through the night still, but lately because I have a cough that occasionally wakes me through the night as well, so I'm definitely not well rested by the time Rebecca gets up at 6 or so in the morning!





Justin tells me that she was pretending to eat something out of his hand. She loves to play pretend games, and does it regularly with both of us through the day. :)


I've decided we must be making use of screwdrivers just a little too much lately. She decided her dolly needed an operation that only a screwdriver could care for!




And... when the dolly was finished, the operating table apparently needed some work as well! :)

July Stuff

Well, the most fun developments are on the part of Rebecca.

She is standing alone more and more, and doing things such as climbing into (and getting stuck in) the middle of our table (it has place to store the chairs, which, when there are no chairs in it, is apparently a baby jungle gym! She actually managed to climb all the way up into it, and get stuck one day... she hasn't done that again... yet!

Rebecca is climbing stairs like a pro, and that is exactly what she heads for every time we are in the back yard. I'm starting to think we're going to need to find a way to "baby gate" the FROG steps! I suppose in a way it is better than her heading for the pool, but really, considering I really don't think she would be able to pull of climbing into the pool just yet, and I know she has no fear of falling since she has proven that on more than one occasion, I think I would prefer she head for the water for the moment.

We've discovered that she is beginning to use the signs that I have been trying to show her. Last night was the most definite example of her using signs, when we were sitting eating, and she was quite upset about something, and finally she started tapping her hand on her mouth! YAY! She's starting to communicate her needs! Now if only I can convince her that "eat" and "milk" are actually two different things, LOL!

Rebecca has also taken to "reading" to herself, which is quite entertaining to watch. She'll get out her (apparently) favourite book of the day, and then sit there for 10 minutes or more sometimes giggling to herself as she turns the pages one by one... over, and over, and over again! She also loves it if you'll come along and read the book in her hands to her! I'm trying to teach her to sign "book", since she apparently likes them so much, but thus far "eat" is her priority. :-)

Oh, and she has not gone back to any sort of a napping schedule at all. She cat naps for about 2 hours in the late afternoon (about 4-6pm), so long as I am sitting holding her. It really isn't conducive to getting ANYTHING done at all. She fusses if I so much as move, and she refuses to be in the sling or anything for the "cat nap" period. The rest of the day she's fine, but of course, I can't get sleep for myself... and she's not sleeping more at night either. If anything, she's sleeping less! Argh!

Well, I don't remember if I mentioned it before or not, but Justin got a raise at work, then he got a pay cut, and thankfully he came out about 1.5% ahead anyway! He got one of the highest raises that was given out at his work place, and it beat the pay cut, so we are thankful for that extra $280/year, lol. :-) It doesn't sound like much, but it's something, anyway! Maybe they'll increase back to the original pay rates if sales do well enough this year... or maybe he'll get and KEEP his raise next year! At least we're not working with even less money...

I've been trying to catch Rebecca doing interesting things, because really, while it is cute to see just regular "smiling" pictures, she is so much more interactive than she was even a week ago! The only problem is, she now smiles every time she sees the camera too! She loves the light on my camera, and starts grining waiting for it, even if we're outside, where I almost NEVER use my flash! I think we've done pretty well catching quite a few pictures of her anyway... I'll have to load them onto my computer shortly and then get them up sometime soon. She's changing way too fast lately!

We spent our afternoon today helping out some friends, removing a bunch of branches from their back yard for the bulk trash tomorrow. They had a stack in their back yard that ended up creating a stack about 10 feet tall, 15 feet wide, and 20 feet long at the curb! Their neighbour was complaining about it being in their back yard, for whatever reason, so they decided they would appease the neighbour rather than keeping it all for "bonfire" wood.

And, the last of the news is that I apparently have a desire to injure myself a lot this past week. I walked into the fire extinguisher which (STILL) hasn't been mounted on the wall, and sliced my little toe open... so I haven't been in the pool all week (nor has Rebecca) while I awaited some healing of that. It finally stopped weeping occasionally in the last couple of days, so I think Rebecca and I will be able to make use of the kiddie pool again. :-) The other was, I sliced my finger open on the lid of a yogurt container! Did you know that was possible?? I didn't! Anyway, it's like a giant paper cut!

I realized it had been nearly a week!

I do have pictures, they're just stuck on my camera until I figure out where I put the cord! In the mean time, I thought I would give a bit of an update on things around here since Rebecca is currently asleep!

Rebecca has started pulling herself up from a sitting position to a standing position, provided that she can get her fingers around something stable enough to stay in one spot with her weight on one side of it. She's not making any attempts at moving beyond that, so I think she just likes the new perspective on the world. She isn't even really crawling, unless you want to count getting onto all fours to look around, then flattening out so her head is on the floor and using her toes and fingers to try and move herself whatever direction she wants to go (and getting there!). We were given some money as a baby gift, so we went and got her a number of books. Some were board books, some were paper back or hard cover. We got her The Little Engine that Could, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Guess How Much I Love You, Ten Little Lady Bugs (sort of a touch-and-feel type book), Corduroy, Goodnight Moon, and Pat-the-Bunny. We also invested in a Barnes and Noble membership that day, and with those and a couple of other purchases basically saved the cost of the membership, and since that is an area that we spend a few times each year (on books, etc) we figure it was worth the money!

Rebecca seems to have been traumatized recently when she wasn't given right back to me when she was straining to get to me. Now she often will cry if the wrong person so much as looks at her, let alone talks to, or holds her. She was even ready to cry when Deanna (a very "safe" person in her life) talked to her. She's past it with Deanna, I think, but she doesn't respond so well to people she doesn't know as well anymore, so hopefully she'll get past it sometime soon, but, perhaps we'll just have a "shy" baby for a while.

Justin cut the lawn today (YAY!!!). Our back yard was going to seed since it had been so long since it was cut. Of course, part of the reason it had been so long is because one half of our yard was a marsh for about 10 days because it's been raining so much, so I'd only had the opportunity to cut half of it, and then the weekend before that, Justin didn't have time to cut the lawn. So, now it's done! I do want to find out if there is some sort of tic spray or powder that you can put around your yard, because there are a lot of tics in this area this year, and local doctors mostly refuse to treat Lyme's Disease if you get it (not sure why, but they do, and I think it's foolish of them). So, it's more important than ever to make sure the tics don't stand a chance in our yard... which requires regular cutting of the lawn, and keeping the brush clear. Honestly, I think we are probably in more danger of being sucked dry by mosquitoes, but there's not a whole lot we can do about those!

We are probably having our niece and nephew come and stay with us for a couple of weeks at a time over the summer. We figure since they're both shorter than 4 feet tall, they can sleep on toddler beds, which will mean we can actually fit two beds and a playpen into Rebecca's room, and they'll have proper places to have quiet time, and sleep at night. We think their mom has one toddler bed, so it's really just a matter of finding a second one, and some toddler bedding. Hopefully those will be easy enough to find. I have an ad on freecycle right now, but so far in four or five days, there hasn't really been much of a response, so I don't know if we're going to get them for free or not. We figure if we have to, we can get a fairly nice bed from craigslist, and have it become Rebecca's when she's bigger, and consider at least one of the bedding sets "Rebecca's, on loan", so that would make up for some of the cost, perhaps. We'd just be purchasing a little earlier than we were originally planning.

And, Justin doesn't know this yet (because I forgot to mention it) but we currently have one baby bird in the finch cage. I'm guessing we'll have another three in another three days, since there are three yet to be hatched (newer) eggs in the nest, but we shall see. I'm not really sure if this baby hatched today or yesterday, so perhaps there is already another baby in the nest! We would have had babies about a month ago, except that the parents decided to kill two of the eggs, and then abandoned the rest of them just before they should have hatched. I'm rather relieved that they haven't tossed baby or eggs out as of yet, really, and am hoping that they will raise this one, and any siblings so they get to fledge. I'm not, however, looking forward to the noise that will ensue in another couple of weeks! Those things are loud when they are learning how to sing!

Happenings... or lack thereof...

Okay, I think we have *possibly* figured out Rebecca's sleeping problem. I think she is a very heavy wetter at night, and because she wets so much through the night her clothing ends up wet after about 5-6 hours, and she's cold and uncomfortable. SO, we're going to get some bamboo doublers, and see if they make any difference at all! They're like $5 a piece, which isn't too bad since we probably only need to order four or so to make it through the 2-3 days before we wash diapers again. Anyway, bamboo is supposed to be extremely absorbent, and it is supposed to wick wetness away, so I figure it's a good possibility that it may fix our lack of sleep to at least a point. The worst that happens is we spend a bit of money and not have it work at all, but it is my suspicion that since I tried changing her diaper at 4:30 and then she didn't wake again until 8:00 this morning, we may just need to give her a dry diaper halfway through the night, or find a way to keep her drier at night... hence the bamboo. Hmm... I wonder if the fabric store would sell bamboo terry or something like that...

Hayley, you suggested that perhaps she is teething, and I would go for that idea, if she were fussing through the day as well as not sleeping, but she is rather happy all day lately... today being an exception, LOL... we're NOT having a good day, and I'm not sure why. I think maybe she's got an upset tummy, because she's been spitting up a lot since last night. Anyway, she's normally only fussy for the second half of the night most times (at which point we spend more time awake than asleep).

My mum found the Whisper pant from Bummies, I believe it is, and it looks so similar to what we are using, so we'll probably be getting those. I am really starting to like the looks of the Motherease original one-size system, though I like what we are using right now as well. The only thing is, I don't think my baby is going to toilet train before she outgrows the diapers we have for her, and so I need to find some diapers for her to go into, otherwise we'll be back to flat diapering (not that that is a problem, as I am becoming rather adept at doing that... Justin just isn't as good at using them!). Perhaps we'll look at it for the next one... maybe. The more I use the fitted diapers the more I think the flats are more convenient. Perhaps I'll just see if I can track down an airflow cover somewhere that I can either borrow or have, and test those out and see if I like them on Rebecca. This is the one part of cloth diapers that I don't like!!

We have been having cool weather lately, after those nice warm days a couple of weeks back, but we have officially started the season of necessary lawn cutting! Justin cut the lawn for the first time this past weekend. Well, the front lawn, anyway. The back lawn needs a little work before we cut it. (Mainly picking up branches and such from the wind blowing things down). Now, the cool weather has not stopped the robins from starting their nests. We got up one morning, only to discover that a robin was attempting to build a nest on our lamp over the back door. Well, that wasn't working so well, so then it must have decided that our mail box looked to be a better candidate. That failed when we discovered the beginnings of the nest and got rid of it. However, Justin had some sympathy for it, and asked me about how big a space a robin needs to build a nest, and he mounted a ledge under the covering of our front porch, so now we have a robin's nest there. But, that's not all. Not only do we have a nest there, but I noticed a couple of robins coming and going a lot in our back yard, and sure enough, there is a second nest on our property. At least these birds were a little more intelligent, and they built theirs in the willow tree. But, those two nests along with our finches inside is going to create a VERY noisy yard and house!

I got our back entry tidied up quite a bit today, as well as the bathroom and cleaned the bathroom. The livingroom and dining room are my cleaning tasks for tomorrow (livingroom will be easy, diningroom will be more of a task, as I still haven't got everything organized in there!). I'm trying to devise a system of keeping track of the things that need to get done on a given day, but haven't succeeded yet. I'm currently thinking that if I put everything on index cards, and get a file box and put days of the week, numbers of the month, names of the months, etc I may actually keep it figured out, and it would be tidy and easy to keep. I don't know though. Hmm... anyone have ideas on that one? I like to make things into little jobs that one can do in 5-10 minute stints at the moment, because that's often all the time I have at any given time with Rebecca, though she is becoming much easier to occupy (and she is starting to love riding on my back in the mei tai while I work!).

And, I have some pictures, but haven't the time at the moment to get them up. I need to get Rebecca ready to go to the church for choir practise! I'll try to get them up this week, though it seems that any time I say something like that I never get a chance to do whatever it was until the following week or even later. But, I am going to try!