Ramblings of a Stay-at-Home Mom

Dear Zachary Happy 2 months little guy! And you’re starting to be not so little anymore! You’re finally putting on some decent weight (praise hands!) and jumped from 7.9lbs to 10.3lbs in just over a month! Very impressive little man! Dr. Porath has made comment that she was impressed that you jumped from the 4% to 12% that quickly, but I guess everything (including your insane appetite) is finally catching up. I’m just happy to hear that you’re growing and keeping the weight on. You also grew to 22.6 inches, so still on the small side, but at least you’re healthy. Speaking of awesome, you are a pretty awesome eater. You still nurse every 2-4 hours (depending on mood and how long you’ve been awake), but it’s always a really good nursing, and then you’re happy afterwards. And because you’re still sticking to the 3-4 hours at night, it also means that Mommy can get some sleep at night as well. You’re also an awesome sleeper. You sleep through pretty much anything. Your sister's being ...

3 weeks overdue and here it is finally! Just a refresher for those of you who aren't up to date, I had to have a scheduled C-Section due to having 2 previous C-Sections for the girls. The hospital that is in my town doesn't allow for a VBAC after 2 C-Sections and if I really wanted to push for it, I'd have to drive to the city for all my appointments. 2-hour round trip for a 10-minute appointment is not my cup of tea. So a scheduled C-Section is was. The morning of July 7 came early, of course. Thankfully it was just me and Keith as my Mom had taken the girls the night before so that we didn't have to wake them up at 6am to drop them off. After Keith having his breakfast (fasting for myself sucks) and me grabbing a shower, we headed to the hospital around 6:30am. Of course when we got there, there was a mix-up in paperwork which meant that we had to wait for a bit to get everything straightened out. And once we got on the elevator, I got a call from the Maternity Ward, ...

We welcomed them newest little addition to our family on July 7, 2017! Say hello to Zachary Keith Neufeld! He came via a scheduled C-Section at 7lbs, 20 inches and as perfect as can be! I'll have a birth story up shortly, but for now, enjoy some cute pics of the little man!

Seeing as the little guy is due for his eviction notice tomorrow morning, I figured it might be due time to do up a post on how I got ready for my upcoming C-Section and recovery. One of the biggest obstacles was setting up his room and getting meals ready. His room before was the girls' playroom, so it had all the toys and books in there. We managed to move all the toys (while doing a great big purge) into the girls' room and then start moving the baby stuff around his room. I still had the crib in the shed, so that was easy to put together, but I was missing a dresser for him, until Keith's step-brother and wife came to the rescue with a dresser  and a car seat! I also had my rocking chair and side table from before, so that helped as well. When it came to clothes, I didn't do any shopping until we knew what we were having. And then it didn't even matter because as soon as we announced that we were expecting a boy, my friends and sister came together and gave me ...

Strawberry picking season is here ! Even with it raining last night, we still decided to go, as I didn’t want to roast in the heat next week. I dropped off Dominique at my friend's place (she was very happy to see her best friend Kianna), and then me and Violet met my Mom and Natalie’s kids at the Fridensfeld Strawberry U-Pick Farm. It was still a bit chilly out, but it was nice enough to pick. It didn’t take me and Mom long to pick about 9 gallons of strawberries (3 for her, 4 for me and 2 for my mother-in-law). The kids helped here and there, but otherwise it was just me and Mom picking. Took us almost 2 hours, but we had our pails full! Once we got home, I fed the girls lunch and started working on my strawberries. Managed to get most of them into the sink to clean off and then started cutting them up to put into the freezer (remembering to keep 2 pails aside for my mother-in-law and ½ a pail in the fridge for us to eat). After Dominique went down for her nap, Violet was adamant...

Summer in the City was this past weekend and the girls had a blast! We ended up going on both Friday afternoon and Saturday morning/afternoon.  The girls got face painting done, had lots of fun in the bouncy houses and the Kids in the City tent, did some rides and got to meet Rapunzel! I swear my kids are ride addicts. My Dad had bought them a couple rides on Friday afternoon and it was pretty hard to convince Dominique to get off the rides! Keith took them Saturday morning and after I was done work, I met them there. We got some more ride tickets for the girls and then Keith had to leave for work. Which meant that I was fielding 2 kids by myself on rides. But it was worth it. They loved going on the rides and Dominique especially was squealing for joy. I may have had to ask a couple times for Violet to have her picture taken with Rapunzel. She's shy around grown ups that she doesn't know, but after a bit, she obliged. Dominique was the same, but she was staying in the stroller...

As Summer is approaching very quickly, I decided to put together a Summer Bucket List for us to do as a family.  It's a mixture of indoor and outdoor stuff, just to cover sunny and rainy days. The list is pretty self-explanatory and I'll be updating it as we go along and cross things off the list!! Go to the water slides Go to the Zoo Go to a Fair Watch a Parade Draw on the sidewalk Have a picnic Go strawberry picking Go to the Beach Visit the Splash Park Have a backyard Sprinkler party with friends Have a wiener roast Have a bonfire Watch fireworks Make homemade ice cream Visit a museum Make homemade jam Make cookies for someone Have a play date Make Popsicles Make s'mores Have a water gun fight Bake cupcakes  Go to the Farmer's Market Visit a local farm or petting zoo Have a movie night with pajamas and popcorn Play in a sandbox Make cheerio/fruit loop necklaces Play with bubbles Color in a coloring book Atte...

These past couple weeks have been slightly crazy around the house lately. It started off on March 3 (Thursday). Violet tripped/got pushed while playing tag in Pre-School and got some pretty serious rug burn on her nose. Poor girl. It happened when I stepped out of class to take Dominique to the Nursery, but the Class Teacher was there and saw it happen. Apparently one boy went to tag her as "it" for Tag, and she tripped at the same time, which caused her to plow into the carpet. She did cry a bit, but got back up and went back to playing with the other kids. And when anyone asked her what happened "so and so pushed me!" It took just over a week to fully heal, but it's looking much better! [caption id="attachment_821" align="alignnone" width="2448"] The initial rug burn. [/caption] [caption id="attachment_823" align="alignnone" width="3024"] A couple days later. Looks worse than it actually was. [/capt...

We finally got a Play Room for the girls' set up! This makes me so excited, even if it did take me almost 3 hours to transform that room. You see, there's 4 of us, in a not very big house. Granted it's a decent size, I'm not complaining about that. But 4 of us, on one floor (we rent out the basement for extra $). Luckily, the main floor has 3 decent sized bedrooms, a decent living room and kitchen and 2 storage closets (!!). Back when each girl shared a bedroom, all the toys were in the living room. And then when we moved Dominique into Violet's room, that room became the Spare/Storage Room over the Christmas holidays because off the Christmas stuff I had to hide from the girls. So after Christmas was all said and done and I was back to being home during the week (thank you God for Keith's new job!), it was decided that we'd turn the Spare Room into the Play Room. And crossing our fingers that  most of the toys stay in there. So Monday morning, I went to wo...

Yikes! I got a bit behind in posting my December Daily this week! I blame it on working too much and not sleeping enough. Sounds good, right? Right. Any way..... For Monday's page, I decided to do 2 pages, with the 2 Christmas Cards that I made. I quickly and easily whipped them up, but am having a hard time deciding which one I like best! Arg!! These photos were taken a couple weeks back by our family photographer and I finally got around to doing something with them. I like how they turned out and can't wait to hand them out this year! Which one is your favourite? Either way, I'm handing them both out!

Welcome to Day 5 of December Daily! For today's story, I used our visit down to Keith's Dad & Step-Mom and how much fun the kids had while we were there. To put it mildly, all the girls did while we were there was stuff their faces full of food (especially Dominique), and run around with some cousins that were there. Oh, and Dominique mastered going down the stairs on her bum. She's already proficient going up, just took a bit to figure out going down.   I used Hello Devember on the PL App (like always). I had only taken a few photos while we were there, so it was easy and quick to put together.

I’m glad I got today’s story down. It’s not Christmas themed, but it does show how my hubby goes out of his way for me on days that I work. Long story short, after working all morning and then going grocery shopping, I was tired and a bit cranky. Enter the husband. He distracted the girls with a movie so that I could have a ice hot bath to help with my sinus cold and the. Went out to pick up some food for the girls (chicken fingers & fries from Dairy Queen) and got me sushi from Irori and a bottle of wine. And made sure that I was in bed as early as possible because of work the next morning. I’m so spoiled. Here’s the page for today:      I used the Hello December Kit on the PL App.  And yes, my tummy was very happy and content 😊    

Yeah, yeah....I'm a couple weeks behind. I know. I seriously don't know where the time went with this little girl of mine. How in the world is she 1.5 years old already? Sheesh girl! Any ways, as per my journalling tradition, here's 10 things about Dominique at 18 months: Walking/running all over the place. She barely sits still long enough to eat meals before she wants out again. Climbing everything, including the step stool so that she can watch me make supper and bake. Loves watching Tangled (Rapunzel). Not joking. She sits down and watches the entire movie with eyes wide open. Eats me out of house and home! I think she piles back more food than Violet does now. Constantly babbling (with some whining in there). Curious about everything. And having to warn her about getting hurt for touching something she shouldn't. Knows most body parts (ears, eyes, mouth, nose, tongue, hands, feet and belly button) and can do the sounds of 5 animals (elephant, chicken,...

A little late for posting Halloween, but oh well! Halloween for us covered 2 days. Friday evening was Trick-or-Treating at the local mall and Saturday evening was spent going around to places. Unfortunately for Violet, it was not the greatest weekend. She woke up Friday morning with a 100* fever, that took quite a while to go away. Thankfully I had Tylenol on hand for her and it helped. I did mention to her around supper, that it might be best to stay home from trick-or-treating at the mall. She was adamant that we had to go trick-or-treating at the mall that evening. Seeing as she was feeling better, I decided that we'd give it a go. [caption id="attachment_50" align="aligncenter" width="660"] My Beautiful Queen Elsa[/caption] After braiding Violet's hair into 2 French Braids to go along with her Elsa dress and getting Dominique into her Snow White dress, we hopped into the car and headed to the mall. When we got to the mall, Dominique opted to ...