I was planning to be relatively productive today. Do some dishes, go for a walk around town, get my week organized… ok, so not super productive, but I had plans. However, I woke up to a nasty stomach ache and loud wind. I know lots of people accomplish a lot every single day, whether its sunny or just a little windy. But today, I just don’t feel like it. Rather, I feel like being a bit of a suck and hiding out playing toys with my son. What’s the rush? I also had something on my calendar for this evening but I haven’t heard from those involved, so I’m thinking thats off. All the more reason for me to stay squishy and comfy all day!

I don’t want to be a total slacker, so I think I’ll lay out ideas for Christmas gifts today. I know, its sooo early! And whether I have ideas or not, I likely won’t accomplish the shopping until Christmas is close enough to make me sweat. Yet for some reason, I’m sooo excited! Hopefully thinking about it this far in advance will help me come up with awesome gifts without asking people what they want and ruining the surprise.

I’m feeling fairly reminiscent these days for some reason, so I think I’ll recount the preparations for last Christmas. Just one story.

Growing up, my family would all go Christmas shopping together. We’d hit a mall that had two levels, and we’d divide up for about a half hour at a time and then switch levels. We would periodically sneak into the underground parking lot and stash the gifts we had purchased in whatever bag we had marked as ours. Of course, this was when we all lived at home, none of us were married, and we all bought for everyone. Now we’re all married, and we pull names, which make a lot more sense, and we shop separately since none of the siblings live in the same province. Anyway, this isn’t the story I’m dwelling on. Moving on.

I love the concept of all Christmas shopping together. If I need help with an idea for someone else, I’d have someone to bounce ideas off of. So Brady and I have carried it over. We pick a Saturday or two (or weekday if he spontaneously gets a day off work) and set them aside for Christmas shopping, for others and each other. However, this last year, I was sneaky and mean. And smart. I purchased Brady a Nintendo Wii. Early. I knew how badly he wanted one, and I knew that I couldn’t afford one within the budget we’d set for ourselves. So I made it really clear that the Wii was pretty much off the table. He never even asked for it technically, since we knew it was over our budget, but I was such a liar and I built it up like it was something I really wished I could get him. He assured me that it was fine and he would be totally happy with anything I bought him. Maybe we’d get a Wii in the years to come. But I bought him one that I found on Kijiji. And I bought it in November. And then I took him Christmas shopping in December. Twice. He was even gracious enough to take Dekker the entire time. While he shopped and brought gifts down to the car and dragged Dekker’s stroller through womens clothing stores, I window shopped with a latte in my hand. TWICE! I was pretty proud to have pulled this off, but figured I deserved it after having bought him a Wii.

My favorite part of all of this was coming clean, though. The man opened his gift on Christmas day and was sooo thoroughly surprised and happy! And then, and only then, did I tell him what I’d done. Its best to drop that kind of information when the person is really, really happy. He laughed at me and said it was totally worth it.

Of course now, Christmas is coming up again. And this con has been brought up again. And again. I think I’m in trouble. Something tells me I’ll be on Dekker Duty while Christmas shopping this year…

If anyone read my past apple juice post, you’ll know that what I made turned out yummy but somehow, I only got just a little bit. So on Saturday I bought 20 lbs of crispy sunrise apple from the BC fruit stand at the farmers market, and am now taking the plunge into a new method.

Not going to lie, this method freaks me out a little. Instead of throwing everything into a juicer, I’m just gonna chuck everything into a pot, sprinkle on cream of tartar, put in a ton of boiling water, and then let everything just sit together for a day and a half before I drain off the juice! I think this is a relatively common way to make it, but I’m considerably more nervous about it! In my mind, the juice would be watered down. Right?! And if it is, that’s a lot of apples to waste! Yet after googling it extensively and getting a tried and tested recipe from a friend, it seems everyone uses roughly the same measurements (whether using cups, litres, gallons, quarts, etc.) and does the same thing! So thats what I’ll do! In batches, of course. Plus I got one of those cool slicer things from the Ikea chunk of our Edmonton trip, so that will make it faster too! Now I just hold my breath and hope that Dekker has a decent day. Poor teething baby 🙁 I know he’s a great teether, but he is pushing sooo many  right now! I have a very sensitive little one on my hands. However, now that I think about it, this method of juicing doesn’t require a lot of hands on stuff at all. I could wash and slice and sprinkle and boil and pour in about twenty minutes. Maybe a half hour. Not too ominous.

Juice juice juice…

I’m not at all sure what to write about today! I’ve been wanting to announce something very special for a few days and finally got the go-ahead so I suppose I’ll start there!

My brother and sister-in-law have welcomed their second child into the world! Wednesday morning, their son Charlie Manoah was born. He was 7 lbs 5.5 oz, 21″ tall, and in great health. I can’t wait to meet him! Thanksgiving can’t come soon enough. I’m sad to say that I don’t have a picture to add. I do have one on my cell phone, but I figure that until they post a picture of him somewhere, I will hold out. I’d hate to take that honor from them. So that being said, that’s all I can really say! Hopefully more to come.

Church was pretty nice this morning. I was asked to play guitar for a special number, which I really enjoyed. I used to get recruited to help lead singing a lot in church but it seems like, since having a baby, it happens less. I understand that people are trying to give me one less thing to do, but I miss it sometimes. So I really liked participating and learning a new song. After church was a big lunch, which I spent picking the brain of a woman who I really love. She has six well behaved kids, and since I’m hoping for a bit of a brood myself, I have been wanting to take her out for coffee just to ask how she does what she does. A wise woman.

Now we’re home. Brady just fixed the dryer and a pile of laundry is in. New sheets are on the bed. Our room smells like cinnamon sugar. The baby is sleeping. Can anyone say “down time?” For some reason, my legs are extremely tired. I think I’ll give them a rest.

Today was the best. I loved it. Often trips to the city are filled with errands, which is necessary and not a huge deal. My least favorite kind of trip is the kind when I need to go to about fifteen different places and at each place, I need one thing. I get so tired and frustrated dragging Dekker and his stroller in and out of each store, with him getting progressively fussier until we become those people who you don’t want to be stuck in the check out line with. Today was not that day.

We went straight to the farmers market for apples. I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to try a new method to make apple juice. I was tossed up on what kind of apples to use, but when I found sunrise apples straight from the Okanogan, I jumped! I went to the scale/register with four huge bags where they informed me that if I wanted a case of about 20 lbs, it was way cheaper. So instead of having 20 lbs in bags for $30, we put them in a box and paid $22. Win! High five for the honest checkout guy. *high fives the air* To my dismay, all the pickling cucumbers were sold out. I was really looking forward to making pickles this year but they were the first thing in my garden to completely bite the dust. But I was way too happy with my apples to be too let down.

From there we went to the mall where I cashed in my six empty makeup containers at MAC for a free lipstick. Someone working there had once recommended a color to me, but when I went back one day to ask to try it on, a different woman was adamant that I shouldn’t wear such a color. Turns out it looks awesome! I was very happy with it, and purchased an eye shadow as well. Believe it or not, if that wasn’t enough estrogen for one day, I went to Sephora and picked up a blush. Then to a clothing store where I had some credit stored up. I promised a friend I’d buy a fall outfit if she did. I purchased a grey v-neck sweater dress, black leggings, and sexy black over-the-knee boots. I am sooo happy with my finds!

We hit Superstore next for groceries, and Costco last just for milk and chicken strips. We drove home through my parents hometown and brought my dad and apple and a had a quick chat before we drove home. Now, Dekker’s in bed and we’re only now getting to supper.

I know no one really cares about my purchases, but rarely do I have a day in the city where I don’t feel completely bedraggled at the end. It was a complete success! I couldn’t be happier!

Now for mashed potatoes and chicken strips! At 9:00pm. In the bathtub. No judging…

I tend to get stressed out about things very far in advance. It isn’t healthy, but it happens, and I doubt that I’m the only person that feels it.

My latest stress stems off Dekker’s one year appointment to get his shots. As I mentioned in a previous post, it was actually a great appointment. The nurse was warm and helpful, and I didn’t leave feeling like I didn’t have enough love or skills to raise my son. One thing she mentioned to us casually was regarding his 18 month appointment. She said “We’ll do a speech test at his next visit. Just so you know, we hope to hear 25-30 words.” She added that they didn’t need to be real words, more like “daw” for “dog.” But I mean…um…what?!?! I guess my surprise showed because she assured me that once he started, it would be impossible to make it stop, and that he would just talk and talk. I would love to have my son talk relatively early. His talking is something I’ve been looking forward to actually! He hasn’t formed specific words, but he knows who mamamamama and dadadadada are. However, now that there is some sort of “timeline” attached to his speech, it is making this beautiful development into a source of stress for me! What if he doesn’t have 30 words in the next 5.5 months? What if he doesn’t have 10? What if he still only knows mama and dada?

Well if that’s the case, then he just isn’t talked yet! He will. I have to relax a bit more about some of these things, and I know that. I guess it just stems from being a parent for the first time. I want to do everything right, and I think I have some inner fear that someone will tell me I’m doing something horribly wrong if Dekker isn’t forming full sentences in the next few weeks! Exaggeration, I know, but you get my point. So much pressure!! No, he’s not walking, talking, or feeding himself with a spoon. But he’s so happy, playful, interactive, healthy, and smart. He knows who mom and dad are, even grandma and grandpa. He claps and gives high fives. He is very good at learning. He can keep a beat! I need to remember, on top of all of these facts and proofs that Dekker is developing at a good rate, that God is in control, and Dekker is exactly how God wants him. And exactly how I want him too! Why rush him to grow up so fast? I love that he’s still got some “baby” in him! I have been blessed to be able to stay at home with him right now, so he doesn’t have to develop at warp speed at match the other kids at daycare. I LOVE him exactly how he is!

Cheers to my son, growing up on his own time! *raising my coffee cup*

Starbucks recently brought back their best fall drink. The pumpkin spice latte. If you’ve never had one, you probably haven’t lived.

I’m not a regular Starbucks customer. I would like to be, but it costs quite a bit to make into a habit and being that I’m not going back to work in the foreseeable future, I figure that expensive coffee doesn’t qualify as a necessary expense I can dump on my husband. I do treat myself once in a while though. Especially during Frappy Hour events (half price frappuccinos between certain hours certain afternoons) or deals like today’s deal where you buy one latte and get a second one for $1, or when a really great feature drink comes around, like this particular latte. In fact, its the seasonal drinks that get me into trouble most often. It turns out that my last four favorite Starbucks beverages have been features that eventually left the menu and my life. Some have reappeared, which I appreciate, but they leave with the wind of whatever season they rode in on. I know, dramatic, right? But its true. Shall we recount my favorite drinks? Yes. We shall.

Salted-top caramel hot chocolate. I never thought I would be the person who paid out the nose for hot chocolate but my goodness. This drink was like sipping a chocolate-covered pretzel. I had several of them over a short period of time, picking them up when I would be out depositing cheques for my job. Yes, my boss knew. One day, I ordered one and was waiting by that little round table when the barista mentioned “Oh, we don’t get the salt anymore, that’s ok right?” NO! I was kind of thrown off, but not being a fan of causing a problem, I said it was fine, although I’m sure she could read on my face that I wasn’t impressed. Normally, Starbucks is very quick to give you the option to have something else on the menu, sometimes even free of charge. Not this time. Now, there is a salted caramel mocha on the menu, so likely my treat is back in business. However, I don’t see myself ordering anything other than pumpkin spice for a while.

Blended Lemonade. Plain and simple, with the perfect mix of sour and sweet. This was obviously a seasonal thing. Tim Hortons has one but its pure sugar, and if you’ve ever eaten lemon, you know they are NOT that sweet. Sad. But I’ll survive. The Passion Tea Lemonade is a close second.

Honey Latte. I have no idea where that thing went! It was a feature drink that was there one day and gone the next. When I’ve asked about it since then, the response is usually “Do you just want me to put honey in your latte?” Um…if that’s all it was! I don’t make the coffee, so I don’t really know how that all works.

Green Tea Frap with Blackberry syrup. Ok, mainly the syrup is what I’m talking about. That drink looked awful but tasted amazing!!! Bring back the blackberry syrup!!!

Ok, rant over. The question for today is whether or not to be a coffee snob? I could make my own pumpkiny latte here, I know that. But should I instead make up some lame excuse to get to Saskatoon, where I will likely purchase a venti (that means enormous) pumpkin spice latte and an equally huge one for my husband for a mere dollar? Gas money included, those would be two very expensive coffees. But…but…I want one!!! I just want to relive the pumpkin spice latte, or in the Starbucks community, the PSL, over and over again.

Today is Brady’s third day off of work. He goes back tomorrow. As usual, we had big plans for how we would fill our days. As usual, all of our plans fell through. Not that we haven’t enjoyed our days! They’ve just both been spent differently than we had planned.

We were hoping to clear coat our deck and picnic table this week. Nope. We needed to clean up the huge mess I left from making apple juice last week. Its still there. We need to do our laundry from our weekend in Edmonton (since everything gets wrinkly and we just basically dump our suitcases into the washer) but our dryer died yesterday.

I find that I fail without a list. I have been trying to get away from listing recently and so far is hasn’t made anything better. In fact, things are worse and we forget a lot. So. New list for today.

Dishes. Dishes from juicing. Dishes from the last few days that are piled high. Dishes that were chucked into the dishwasher carelessly and didn’t get clean. DISHES!

Dining room. Our dining room table is where we stack everything that doesn’t have a place. It was clean last week. It is now filled with the clean parts of our juicer, some mail, and several purchases that we made over the weekend. Bringing us to #3 on the list…

Put away everything that is new. If we bought it, hopefully we needed it for something, right? So it should go somewhere! We’ve already done some of that. Our new shelf thing is set up in the basement bathroom. The huge haul of BBW soaps are in the drawer. The new living room rug is laid out where it needs to be, but will need a good vacuum before it lies flat. Add that to the list… We need to put the paper lamp somewhere, as well as the BBW candles. There’s more, but I can’t keep it all straight right now. I suppose I am just hoping for a general tidy.

Make a grocery list! It feels like we haven’t lived here in a while, and if that’s the case, we probably don’t have groceries. I’ll know soon. Today, hopefully.

Juice my watermelon. Yup. I have one that I forgot about. Whoops! I’ll check it today and if its in good shape, then we’ll just eat it. But I’m wondering if its a little too ripe, if I can just pulverize it and make it be juice. Doesn’t hurt to try! If its too squidgy to eat, maybe I can drink it!

Fix the scooter. We made Dekker a cute little wooden rocking scooter for his birthday and it broke the day of his party 🙁 I cried. I’m pretty embarrassed, I didn’t realize I had made it so flimsy. So hopefully today we’ll put it back together and reinforce it a bit.

Lastly, sand the deck. Brady is doing that now. We want to try and sand all the stamps and highlighter marks off the wood before we stain it, since we don’t actually want to change the color, we just want to clear coat it. I’d like all the marker off first.

Hopefully we’ll get a bunch of it done! It is a pretty short, uneventful list, after all.

I think that title fits a lot of my posts these days. Sorry to anyone who is maybe getting bored with photo posts. I like them, and sometimes they tell stories better than my words can. No photos today, though.

Today we took Dekker for his one year shots. We’ve always went to the same public health office for his shots, and I have left every appointment feeling like a terrible mother, sometimes in tears. Either I’m not pushing something enough, or Dekker isn’t doing something exactly how every other baby does, or my favorite – he’s overweight, and I’m overfeeding him. I finally decided to venture further into the city to try a new facility. That was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.

The nurse we spoke to, Dawn, was friendly and encouraging. She was very happy with our answers to her questions. She suggested for us to look at Dekker’s progress in things on a weekly basis instead of daily, which is a great idea. He still struggles with solid food, and throws up like crazy once in a while because his gag reflex is so sensitive, but looking at how he eats in a week, instead of each day, helps me remember that we all have an off-day once in a while.

His details are currently following their respective growth charts flawlessly. He weighs 26 lbs 15 oz, perfect with the 97th-99th percentile. He is 31″ tall, following the 85th percentile, and his noggin is 50 cm. 99th percentile 🙂 Its good to have a big thinker.

At one year, kids get three shots instead of the two we’re all used to. These ones went into his arms instead of his thighs. I actually preferred it that way. I got to hold his whole body across mine and it was easier to contain him while he got his needles. He got the first two in one arm and the nurse gave us time to comfort him before he got his last one. The last nurse didn’t even give us an option. But Dawn let us take our time. When I sat him up, he gave her a very angry look and bawled in the other direction. She laughed and commented with “Oh no, you’re so mad at me!” When he wouldn’t settle, I asked if we should just do the last one, and she smiled and said that would be fine. She really let us run things, which I appreciated. When it was over, she gave him a toothbrush wrapped in loud plastic. He looked at her hesitantly but eventually gave in and took her peace offering. He was happy again before we even got to the car.

After the visit to public health, we hit Starbucks for the first Pumpkin Spice Lattes of the season. Couldn’t leave out that part of the story 😉

Dekker started wailing about halfway through our drive home. It was then that I discovered a molar. Our first molar. On the day he got three needles.

My son deserves a medal. Instead, I’ll give him yogurt and an early night.

The lovely Kinsmen Park closed today. Apparently it will be rebuilt and in full operation again in 2014, but it will never be exactly how it is now ever again. It will change from a carousel and train ride to a zip line, swing of the century, ferris wheel, and more.

Today was Dekker’s first and last experience at Kinsmen Park. What a great day.