Yikes! It’s November already — and good bye breastpump!

My poor blog has been languishing untouched for almost 2 months… where does the time go???  Thank Goodness no one knows about this blog except my husband & Nicole (who suggested I start blogging), otherwise I would be hearing LOTS of complaints.  Oh well.

October has gone by so quickly!!!  Kiki turned 5 months old on Halloween. I did not dress him up this year… by the time we decided to get off our lazy asses & get him a costume, they were all sold out *sob*… oh well you snooze you loose.  But look out for next year! We did take a couple of pictures of him with the pumpkin though.

He popped 2 teeth at once in early October.   By now you can already see them very clearly – the upper incisors (front central teeth).  His grin just got even cuter with that!!!  He now can spend up to 15 minutes on his tummy, grabbing at his toys (well actually shoving them into his mouth).  Today, he has rolled over at least 5 times, from back to belly. Then he just stares at me, as if saying “mom, what did I just do?”. It’s very cute.

 School is also going very well… I got an A on my first assignment! I handed in the 2nd one last weekend, we’ll see how that goes. The 3rd one is due in 2 weeks, and I have a final exam at the beginning of December!!  Yikes!  Thank Goodness it’s an easy course. I can get away with doing schoolwork only at night, for 1 hour, during the weekday! I should be doing that right now actually, but hey I gotta blog!!!

Oooooh… and as of December 1st, I will be saying goodbye to my breastpump!  Hey, I have been pumping breastmilk since June 1st, every single day!  My son would not take the breast, and now we know why.

1. He got the bottle at the hospital, the day after he was born. Big mistake.

2. He was a lazy nurser, he would not latch on, he would fall asleep.

3. My milk supply was low. We realized that only a month into the process, after visiting a lactation consultant for a couple of months.  “Nursing mother’s tea” and a medication called Domperidone — and me pumping every 2 hours (!!!) from 5am to 11pm every day — took  care of that, but by that time it was too late. He would not take the bottle…

So I resorted to pumping his milk & giving it to him by bottle.  I am pretty darn proud of myself… my son will have been almost exclusively breast fed for 6 months. We give him formula 1x at night only, just so that he is used to it & so that I could freeze some milk.. result: our deep freezer is half full jars containing breast milk. He’ll have his mommy’s milk for at least a month after I stop pumping!!

My first meme and other stuff

Phew. Long time no writing.  It’s so hard finding time these days!!!  Being a mommy, housekeeper and wife all in one is a lot of work! On top of that I decided to take a course this semester — trnslation from French to English. I am used to translating the other way around (English to French) so it’s not easy!!  The 2 language structures are different, and you must also be aware of cultural differences while translating, as the translated text is geard towards a different audience with a different culture. Anyhow, I manage to do about an hour per night and turns out the workload is not as heavy as I thought. So we managed.

First things first, I have been tagged by MuchMoreThanAMom, so here we go…
Word assiciations:

Mom: Blessed
Self:  Happy
Red:  Canada
Wood: Floors
Run: Walk

The marking events in the pas couple of weeks (since last posting) have been:

My son Kiki amazes me every single day. He laughed out loud for the first time 2 days ago when I was tickling him. It’s such a beuatiful sound. He’s been doing it ever since, whenever I tickle him. I love it!! He now also vocalizes a lot: mumumumum and buhbuhbuh are his favourite sounds so far. Actually he does “mumumumum” when he’s not happy about something (tired of a game, hungry or has a dirty diaper) so I know that something needs to be done before he starts screaming his head off. }
I started taking him to a “babyhour” program at our local library this week.  It’s a half an hour program put on every Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. for babies 0 to 6 months old. Most of the babies were over 6 months old there but Kiki did not seem to mind. He was just sooooo happy to be there. He was looking around at the other babies, watching the librarian and just having a great time. We did some nursery rhymes with puppets and rattles. He even held the rattle for a little bit!!! We’ll be back next week for sure.

On September 10, we watched a documentary about 9/11.  CBS was broadcasing a documentary made by 2 French journalists (brothers) who were in NYC to make a documenatary about NYC firefighters. 9/11 happened and they filmed the whole thing. We could actually see a close up shot of one of the planes hitting the World Trade Center…. and we could hear the sound of people jumping from the buildings and hitting the floor. It was terrible. I held my men close to me, very close, and I was so happy to have them. This whole event just served to remind me how my little family is more important than anything or anyone else, and how lucky I am to have JJ and Kiki in my life.  I don’t know how I could have lived without them.  They make me want to become a better person every day. 

TGIF!!! The weekend should be relatively quiet, as is the case most of the time with us. I will try to talk JJ into buying a new high chair for Kiki. My sister in law sent us one back in April, but we can’t figure out how to attach the seatbelts to it, nor could she remember how. She suggested we call the company & ask them to send us instructions. We saw on the website that the high chair was recalled in the late 90s I believe, but sister in law assured us that they got the new parts and the chair is working fine. Anyhow it’s now sitting in the garage and I really would like to get a new one. We could maybe keep the old one at father in law’s house for when we go there for a visit.

I am also trying to talk JJ into getting a new car in the near future. Ours is a 12 year old Grand Prix. It’s in good shape, but the stick to regulate the heat inside is broken, and JJ has to use plyers to operate it. It’s time to move on I think. Father in law wants to sell us his 3 yr old Toyota Corolla when his lease is up next February, but I think that with a young baby, and maybe another baby in teh future, it’s better to get a wagon. We are not van or SUV people, but we did like the Ford Focus Wagon when we test drove it last spring….

OK Kiki is waking up, so gotta go… I’ll be back soon!!

Hello world… and 10 things you should know about me

Wow…  my first blog post ever!!

I first ventured into the vast (sometimes scary) world of blogness when I started to read MuchMoreThanAMom’s blog (which you should check out by the way : www.muchmorethanamom.com).  Of course I also read about blogs in the paper and saw reports on television. Sounded like a fun way to share my thoughts and the every day life of our little family!!
MuchMoreThanAMom (aka Nicole) encouraged me to start up my own blog so here I am finally.  My son’s 3-month birthday has spurred me on to jump in and start writing….

So, without further ado, here are 10 important things you need to know about me (in random order of importance)

1. Married to a wonderful man for the last 3 yrs (known him for 4 years), let’s call him JimmyJazz (JJ for short) and mother to a beautiful baby boy for the last 3 months!!  They are the light of my life. Our little family is completed by Mili the cat, who has lived with me since the age of 3 weeks or so — she is now 9 years old.

2. I was born in Hungary, raised in Montreal, Canada, and have lived in Ottawa (Canada’s capital ) for the last 5 years (http://www.ottawatourism.ca). have also lived in England (http://www.visitcambridge.org/visitors/) and Switzerland (http://www.klinik-valens.ch/) . 2 unforgettable experiences!!

3. Both JJ and I work for the feds (aka Federal Government). JJ is a project officer for the Border Services Agency, and I am an administrative assistant when not on maternity leave….  (Thank you all Canadians for paying our salaries).

4. But I hope to work as a translator for afore-mentioned government as soon as I manage to finish my online certificate in translation (English to French).

5. I speak, read and write 5 languages (learned and picked up along the way):  German, Italian and French, besides English and Hungarian (doh).

6. My addictions: puzzles (Sudoku and Hungarian); e-mails; Costco (we go there every week almost!); my son’s “talking”, smiles & laughter; Hungarian embroidery & crosstitch (sounds granny-ish, but I don’t think so); working out/exercising; music of all kinds (from classical to rap).

7. I play the piano (in need of practice) and the guitar (very seldomly).

8. I love to sing! I used to be a member of the Cambridge University Musical Society (http://www.cums.org.uk/). Right now, I am a soloist. My repertoire? Nursery rhymes.

9. What/who makes me laugh: my son’s diaper explosions; my husband’s humour; George Bush and other dumb moronic politicians (sorry, I had to put that in); people’s naiveté, sometimes (9/11 was a conspiracy by the US Government? Come on); nothing, sometimes (or so it seems to other people)!!

10. What/who angers me/makes me sad: War being seen as the only way of solving conflicts; pettiness; medicare in Canada’s unwillingness to cover infertility treatments (don’t even get me started); the workplace putting work first, family second. That’s all I could think of!!

So there you have it… my first blogging effort. I hope to be back soon… with more about being a mom and other random thoughts!!  Have a great long weekend, everyone!!