I just wanted to let people out there know that Brianna will be getting baptized on December 9th so we'll be at Rustle. If you want to say hi to us we'd love to see you!

Stink

I'm really looking forward to eventually having a house of our own so I don't have to smell everything coming from other people's apartment. When I was pregnant, and my smell was really sensitive and I had an aversion to everything, I used to love to get outside of the daycare where I couldn't smell the cooking from the kitchen, people's perfume, and the diaper odours. When I'd step through my door in the evening, though, the smell of other people's dinner cooking would turn my stomach and there was no escape from it. The smells were so strong (to me, at least) and I couldn't stand it. Now that we're in a new place and I'm not pregnant, I'm still bothered by the smells from other people's suites seeping through the vents and under the doors. In our bedroom you can sometimes smell cigarette smoke from our neighbour. He reminds me of Pigpen from Peanuts because when I knock on their door (he and his wife mange the building) a cloud of smoke comes barreling out the door as he opens it. It bugs me the most when I smell it at night because Brianna still sleeps in our room.

This morning when I got up I came out of the bedroom and my nose was assaulted with the smell of garbage. I did a quick check of my own garbage and came to the conclusion that it was probably coming from the neighbours upstairs since aside from the smoky neighbours, (who are beside our bedroom so I would have smelled it in there), they're the only ones connected with our suite. Our bathroom quite often smells a bit like sewage too, and I think that's coming from the pipes.

This all reminds me of when I lived on Collingwood Street in Kingston with Shaun Weima and Scott in an upstairs apartment in a house. The guys who lived downstairs were students who really had it out for Shaun because he recorded music and had parties late into the night (this was also a problem for Scott). I don't know if it was because they didn't like us, or if they were just plain filthy, but the smell of garbage when you would walk in the front door downstairs was nauseating. We routinely sprayed Lysol in the foyer outside their door to try and mask the odour, but the two smells together were almost worse. I'm pretty sure if I smelled that scent of Lysol now it would make me sick. The worst part was that my bedroom was right over top of their kitchen where they kept their garbage and it all came up through my vent. It was terrible. When they finally moved out, the landlord told Scott about the piles upon piles of garbage bags that were in their kitchen; he was pretty sure they had never put the garbage out the whole time they lived there.

I've usually been one to open a window to get fresh air into my place instead of lighting candles or spraying air fresheners, but I think I'm going to have to get some of those new Oust candles that claim to get rid of smells. It's getting cold here and next week it's going to be in the -20's so I don't think I'll be able to open the window much longer.

Some Pictures...

Bree's been sleeping a lot better most nights lately and so am I! She's been waking up between 7&8 and I'd rather get up when it wasn't dark out, but I can deal.











Update: I had to say something...two nights in a row now that Bree hasn't slept well at all.

sleeping

I keep reading that Brianna should be able to soothe herself to sleep now that she's just over 5 months old. She can't, really. Sometimes in the mornings or in the middle of the night she fusses I barely wake up and I turn on her Fisher-Price rain forest thing and she falls back asleep, but the actual falling asleep for nap time or for the night still relies on her being walked or nursed. I'm not really sure what I should be doing. I'm not into letting her cry, like most articles tell me, but they don't seem to give many other options. One I read today said that you can have a routine, and then put her down still awake so she can fall asleep on her own. It said that if the baby gets upset you can soothe them with your voice or by rubbing their back. Maybe this is the way to go, I don't know. Today for her nap I put Brianna in her crib and sat down to read in the rocking chair next to her. She didn't cry, but she kicked around a lot and "talked" to her mobile. I thought maybe she didn't realize it was sleep time so I went to my usual walking-back-and-forth-in-the-hallway method. Within minutes her eyes were getting droopy so I took her back to the crib and laid her down. She started to cry, not frantically, but she wasn't happy about being put down. I tried gently rubbing her head, which often works to calm her down if she becomes restless in the night. She stopped crying, but she no longer looked like she was going to fall asleep. I tried again with the walking and I sat in the rocking chair for a while, but she just wanted to sit up and look around the room instead. Finally I nursed her and she was asleep almost right away and I put her down in her crib. I know that eventually I have to let her fall asleep on her own, but I just don't know how to do it. I don't know how much fussing I should accept or if I should just continue to put her to sleep myself. I have no problem putting her to sleep myself, but I feel like a bad parent because of everything I'm reading.