I just finished reading the Twilight series and, if you haven't read it, it was very good. I never would have picked it up if Scott hadn't given me the first book for Christmas. Now I'm among the followers. I'm not crazy like some of them , though. Next I have to continue reading my Outlander series since there's a new book due out in the fall. I'm re-reading the first 6 books to refresh my memory. I've never read a book twice before; I never saw a point. I'm absolutely in love with the books, though. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, they are written by Diana Gabaldon. It's a historical fiction (with some romance thrown in for good measure) about a woman who accidentally gets thrown back to 18th century Scotland and because of circumstances end up marrying and falling in love with a warrior from then. It stretches out through many years and real life wars and it's very good. I didn't used to be much of a reader, but after Brianna was born I started to read more often.

Even though it is officially spring, the weather hasn't been co-operating. It's still been cold and snowy. We've ahad a few days above zero, but nothing to significantly melt any snow. We just get a bunch of puddles that end up freezing and being hazardous. I'm really looking forward to warm weather being permanent. The last two winters here didn't really bother me, but this one has been really long and I'm done with it. My brain is telling me it's spring, though, and I feel my spirits lifting slightly and I'm thinking of spring cleaning. We have the week after Easter off so I'm hoping that along with a trip to the mountains to ski and a trip to the Calgary zoo that I can do some purging around the apartment. I usually enjoy that (until I encounter spiders).

I'm hoping to make our eventual move back to Ontario easier by taking stock of what we have and what to keep or get rid of. I feel confident that the move will happen soon, but it drives me nuts not having a hard time line. We plan to have the application for the transfer in within the next month, but after that it will be out of our hands. We just hope that we don't have to wait to long and we'll be in Kingston by summer. I prefer summers there to here since there are better places to swim and camp. To me camping and swimming go hand-in-hand, but there isn't a lot of lakes here, and the few around aren't worth swimming in with all the pipe-lines running through the province. I hope to be visiting Sandbanks or Charleston Lake this summer.

Christmas Spirit

I am really looking forward to Christmas this year. Brianna will be able to appreciate it more and I love experiencing this for the first time again through her eyes. We went for a walk the other night to see how many Christmas lights were up and she would get so excited when she spotted another house. We're eagerly anticipating when Candycane Lane is all lit up close to our house so we can walk over and see the abundance of lights. It's just a neighbourhood that has been getting into the spirit for years and it's a tradition for thousands of people to come and see it.

We'll be putting our Christmas tree up next weekend and I hope to get some holiday baking done too. Scott has been busy making Christmas cd's with our favourite classics so we can play them while we're doing everything together.

Scott and I both have the week between Christmas and New Year's off and it will be nice to spend that time together as a family. We're hoping to make it to Jasper for a couple nights so Scott can ski and Bree and I can do some wintery stuff around town.

I think there is some fancy way for people to see when I've updated my blog, so in the off-chance that someone still checks-in I'll update.

We're on holidays this week and it's going to be hard to go back to work on Monday. The holiday didn't start off great; both Scott and Brianna were sick. We haven't done much yet since everyone has been better, but we've had some good intentions. I tried to take Bree to the beach the other day when Scott was sick in bed. I drove almost an hour to the other side of Stoney Plain just to discover that the beach was closed. I was pretty annoyed that there was no indication on their web site. Beaches that aren't too polluted to swim in are few and far between in Alberta. We also intended to go to the water park last night, but Brianna had a very late nap and that didn't work out. We're still hoping to go to Fort Edmonton sometime this week. We have managed to get a good hike in around the Fort's perimeter last night, though.

We're still striving for our goal of moving back to Kingston, but we haven't made much progress and still have no idea of when it will happen. I'm so eager to get back there, though, and it's so hard being away from family and friends. It was hard when we decided not to go for this week since my brother, Travis, and his wife and kids were visiting Kingston from Saint John. They haven't even met Brianna and I haven't met their latest addition to the family. I'm just praying that we'll be there by next spring, but we don't know.

Whirlwind

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately. Brianna turned one last weekend and we had Scott's parents here to celebrate with us. We had a really nice time and Scott and I went out for the first time since Bree was born by ourselves. We went to The Olive Garden for supper and then to the movies to see "Made of Honor". I thought the movie was cute, but I think Scott was just okay with it since it was very much your typical chick-flick. It was our anniversary outing because we were married 5 years this past Saturday.

We also had a birthday party for Brianna on the 18th since her birthday was the 20th. It was lots of fun and the cake was really good. Since I had guests for the weekend I didn't make a cake myself. I ordered one from Safeway that was decorated with a Sesame Street theme. It had two layers (one chocolate, one vanilla), and it had custard in between. We also ordered a couple of sushi platters from the only sushi place that we've found to be any good here.

Brianna also started at the daycare on Wednesday and I started work. It was a really stressful week for us as we tried to adjust. She didn't nap very well on any of the three days so she was really grumpy and not herself when I came home. I work until 6 so there isn't a lot of time to spend with her before bed and it's even less time when she's tired. I also feel bad waking her up early in the morning when she's so tired. I hope we all adjust soon. We came home early today, though, because Brianna was having a hard time breathing because of her cold. She had the same thing happen back in February. She had a normal cold and then after a couple days we noticed her breathing was really raspy and fast so we took her to the doctor and she was given a bronchial dilator. Since the same thing happened today I had to bring her home and give her her puffer. It helped almost right away and now she's sleeping. I hope she has a good nap so she'll get better faster. I'll probably take her back to daycare tomorrow (assuming she's doing ok) and bring her puffer with me.

Everyone has told me that I'll get used to taking her to daycare and she'll adjust. I'm sure it will get easier, but I'll never feel like it's the ideal situation for us. My vocation in life is to just be a mom and wife; that's where my priorities are and we always planned for me to stay home. This situation is motivating me to be pro-active in making that happen. When I decided to go back to the daycare I was pregnant and knew the situation at the daycare would be temporary; now that I'm not pregnant I don't know how long it will be and that makes me anxious. I admire parents who can do what they need to do for their kids and accept it even if they aren't happy with it, but it's hard for me. I really hope and pray that we can buy a house somewhere soon(preferably Kingston, but at this point I'm not feeling picky) so that I can finally have a suitable place to have a home daycare and stay home.

Good stuff

Brianna has slept entirely through the night for 2 nights in a row now and this afternoon she fell asleep all by herself without crying. I'm very happy about this. She's also down to nursing at bedtime and in the morning only and there wasn't any stress about losing the other times. After I was stressing about not pushing her she just kind of let go a little. It's funny how that worked out.

I'm also happy that spring is here (again) and the snow is melting (again). Hopefully we've seen the last of the snow and we can stop wearing jackets. Pushing a stroller is really difficult on snowy sidewalks, especially when it warms up a little and it's all heavy and slushy.

We're taking Brianna to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time tomorrow and then going to her fist birthday party on Sunday. Her friend Olivia is turning 1. It's making me excited about her birthday next month.

It's winter here again. We got tons of snow over the weekend and there's still more to come; it's not really welcome. Despite the terrible weather yesterday I went to church with Brianna. I went to the Alliance church here in the west end finally. I put off going because I didn't think I'd like it since it's so huge, but I was pleasantly surprised . I can't really put my finger on why I liked it since I didn't really get to hear much of the message and I didn't really talk to anyone, but there's something nice about it. Brianna was with me for about three quarters of the service and was pretty restless. Eventually an usher approached me and asked me if I'd like her to be in the nursery. I wasn't too sure about it, but once I got her there I felt comfortable with it. They have a good system that made me feel like no strangers were going to steal her so I left her in there. Much to my surprise she didn't mind being left there at all. She was only in there for about 15-20 minutes, but she didn't cry at all. That makes me less scared about putting her in daycare in a month. I'm also glad that I can finally go to church and not stress about her disturbing everyone around us.

nursing

Brianna isn't ready to wean yet and I don't want to push her. She can easily go most of the day without nursing and she can fall asleep without it if we dance with her, but if I don't want to dance with her then nursing is pretty much the only way (aside from taking her for a walk or drive). I'm stressed out because I don't know how things will be for her at the daycare; I don't want it to be difficult for her. My hope is that she will be so tired from all the stimulation and the nap routine will be so different that she will just sleep easily. It will be really hard on me if I can hear her crying and I can't do anything about it. I'm going to nurse her before we go to the daycare and also when we get home. I'm hoping that nursing at different times will help her have her "mommy time" so that she won't feel traumatized. if I wasn't going back to work I wouldn't even be trying to wean. I thought I wanted to wean her, but I don't. I also enjoy the closeness. I wanted to stop sometime in her second year, but my plan was always to make it really gradual so it would be easy on both of us. Hopefully nursing her more when it's not nap time at home will help us both get what we need.