hmmm

Am contemplating laying the blog to rest, at least for awhile. Maybe I'll see you all in the new year.

Plugging Away

Well, even though my initial thesis timeline was to finish the whole darn shebang by September, it just ain't happening. I do think that I can still get it done by Christmas (knock on wood, cross my fingers).

I just finished (except for final touch ups) my first transcript of one of my interviews. So that means I have only 7 more to go. Just for the sake of reference, each interview is about 50 minutes and the transcript of the first one is 14 typed pages.

So lets do the math folks... 8 interviews x 14 pages = 112 pages. YIKES!!!

Happy Birthday

I can't beleive he's one already. My little K Bear has grown so fast. Here's some pics from his birthday.

More on Crazy...

So the other morning I could hear crazy naked lady outside in the back yard. I stuck my head out the bathroom window (we don't have a screen on it yet) and there she was. In her white bra and panties. Gardening away. At 6:45 in the morning.

I have also notice that she never seems to water the few real plants she has in her garden. I think the horrible phlemmy noise she makes... well to be honest, i think she spits on her plants to water them. Seriously. That's what it looks like!

Crazy Naked Lady next door!

So, when we first moved in our impression of our neighbor was that she was a little eccentric. We had purchased our home from her (it's a side by side and she used to rent out this side). We didn't know a lot about her. She's old. Her background seems to be eastern European. She's got a very strong accent so it requires some work to understand what she's saying. She's awake at odd hours (we can hear her banging around in the middle of the night.) She is a widow.

What we learned very quickly after moving in here. She had some major problems with the previous tenants of our place. She used to come out into their front yard and scream at them at six in the morning (according to another neighbor down the street.) She likes to garden. She lets us use her parking space in the back because she doesn't have a car and we don't have a parking spot yet.

Then we learned that her 'gardening' includes planting plastic flowers and setting potted plants around her flower gardens. When she comes out to garden, she wipes off her plastic & silk plants and rearranges them around the yard.

Then the noises she made at night got louder. Banging around (either cubbards or her cane) and some disgusting phlemy noises. (I wake up at night thinking it's Kian, but it's not. She's that loud.)

Then yesterday late afternoon, I realized that she must be hovering somewhere beyond the eccentric border and into crazyland. She often gardens in her housecoat and socks (and pajama's underneath.) Yesterday, she was out in nothing but a light parka. And by nothing, I mean nothing... The parka was long enough to cover her butt while she was standing. However, when she bent over to pull weeds, we had to close the curtains! Seriously, nothing on but the parka. Not even socks, not even underwear.... nothing.

YIKES!!!

I wonder what happens when it finally warms up around here?!

Summer days, sort of.

K went with Grandma & Grandpa D to a petting zoo at an event on Academy last weekend. K loved all of the animals. He also loves being outside. Just crawling around on the grass in the yard is enough to keep him occupied for at least an hour!

Time Flies...

Wow, I can't believe it's June already. I've been back at work for 2 months now and I feel like I've been back forever. It's crazy busy at the office these days, which means the days go by quickly.

I always love getting home to see my little guy (and my big guy too). He's growing so fast and learning so many new things. I expect he'll be walking soon.

More fun with recycling

Kian has discovered the joys of our recycling bin. Any box that can be emptied of its contents is fun. But the recycling bin has all sorts of paper that is crying out to be shredded and eaten!

Back to work tomorrow

Well, it's back to work tomorrow morning. I'm not really looking forward to it but I have to go back or else pay back all of my lovely maternity top up money that the university provided.

I suspect that my little K-Bear will be just fine at the nanny's all day. We've done a couple of trial days to see how it would go and he was good. My mornings will be more crammed than ever before. I'll have to be up super early to make sure I'm ready before he gets up and needs attention.

Then I have to hope there is a visitor parking space open at the nanny's condo so that I don't have to spend time looking for an all day street spot after dropping my little darling off. I'll be bussing to work and E will be picking K-Bear up and taking the car home from there.

I imagine my first week of work will be a lot of wading through 10 months of unchecked emails, getting reaquainted with the student records computer system, rearranging to have access to everything i need, reapplying for my work credit card, sending out "I'm back" messages, meeting with boss and coworkers to get caught up on changes, and so on.

23 hours to go.

Jolly Jumpers Rock!

The Countdown to April 6

I am going to miss my little K Bear so much! I'm not really looking forward to my return to work in a week. It will be nice to get out and have grown up conversations each day, and to sit in a chair more than sitting on the floor, and maybe even to walk around with a light purse rather than a heavy diaper bag over my shoulder. But dang it all, I won't get the same silly smiles, squeals of delight, and slimey hands in my face that I get such a kick out of.

Little Energizer Bunny

Sometimes he just goes and goes and goes!

Playing with bags

This is prior to our move. Kian pulled his bumbo seat out of a plastic bag and was playing with it(the bag not the seat).

Moving again

We bought a house! This time to live in rather than renovate and sell. It's in the Crescentwood neighborhood, our favourite area of the city. There is a community centre a block away with a skating rink in winter and a wading pool in the summer. There are also 3 daycares within walking distance and baby K is on all of their waiting lists already. (In the meantime, we have hired a nanny who will look after him full time at her house a 5 minute drive away.)

I'm very excited to finally live in our very own place. I've already started packing up. We'll be moved in by the end of February. I'm not excited about having to change my address everywhere again. Oh well, that just goes with the territory.

I will miss a number of things about our current apartment. I'll miss being so close to the riverwalk and the forks. I'll miss the pool, hot tub and sauna. I'll miss the mall downstairs and the fact that I can run down and buy milk or get a cup of coffee without going outside. I'll miss the underground parking and the garbage chute. I will also miss the fact that I never have to shovel or mow a lawn.

I won't miss the lack of visitor parking. I won't miss having to combine baby room and office (there are 3 bedrooms in the house). I won't miss having to wait for the elevator. I won't miss the lack of sunlight in our living room.

There will be some work that needs to be done on the place eventually. The kitchen needs to be gutted and redone, it's in pretty bad shape right now. All the windows need to be replaced. There's a teensy bit of work to be done to leak proof the basement. The basement will be finished later on. But we're not afraid of a little work, we're rather used to it by now!

Me & K

My little cutie pie is 7 months old now. My how time flies! He can sit up on his own now and he is desperately trying to crawl (and very frustrated because he can only go backwards right now.)

Looking for Child Care

I have only 2.5 more months before I'm scheduled to go back to work. At this point, I have no confirmed childcare. I'm starting to get a little concerned about that.

So... I have started contacting home daycares. I have also put an ad on Kijiji looking for some stay at home mom who wants to take in another child. I've had a couple of responses to that one. A few are totally out of the question (completely wrong end of town), but there are a couple that look promising. I'm following up with them to see what they are like. Fun times!

Wish me luck!

Finally, I can get started...

My thesis is moving again at long last! The email request for participants went out on Friday. Now on Sunday afternoon, I already have 12 willing participants. I only really need 20 of them, so 8 more to go and the rest are icing on the thesis cake!

Now I need to start sending out my questionnaires.


*****

On another note... K just got his first tooth. It wasn't too bad, he only got up 3 times that night after being up until midnight.

Santa's little helper...

Our little darling is growing so fast and learning so much! He's sitting on his own for a few seconds at a time. He's hopping away in his jolly jumper (at the moment not very happily). He rolls all over the place. I know that in just a blink of an eye he'll be running around the apartment getting into all the things we haven't thought of putting away.

Sigh, three months until I have to get back to work.