my mum

my mom flies in tomorrow afternoon and she is staying with us for the whole week! i'm so excited. the main reason she's coming is for tristan's birthday on tuesday, but i'm sure we'll have lots of time for "talking till our ears fall off" as she said today. she called just to make sure she could use my hairdryer instead of packing her's and when i said "hi mom!" i realized, to my delight that i still say "mom" with the short "o", (like mum) which is a canadianism that i haven't lost yet. my next sentence, though was, "are you going to bring us some jam?" to which my mom replied with gales of laughter. she said, "you're sound like such an american saying jam like jayam". oh well.

normally after christmas i have a sort of bluesy period when i realize that its really all over with and life must return back to normal. but with my mom visiting, it sort of feels like the honeymoon after the wedding; the big event is over, but there's still something great to look forward to. if anyone reading this thinks its odd that i'm comparing a visit with my mom to a honeymoon, i would like to say you have no idea what its like to live so far away from someone that is not only my mom but also one of my dearest friends.

mmmmm....smells like josh is baking brownies downstairs. looks like the weightwatchers bandwagon will have to wait for just a few more days....

oh what fun

finding pictures without our little dude in them was a challenge, let me tell you! christmas was lovely as always, and much more fun with our curious little stew toddling around! in the top left picture, i am holding a can of what is called "spotted dick" in england. you can be sure that it will find its way into our annual white elephant gift exchange next year! to the right of me is my gorgeous sister in law jessica, then my equally gorgeous mom in law, chris on the bottom left and tristan's cousins kaylee and johnny on the right. great food, awesome gifts, fun times. check out tristan's blog for what he thought of the whole thing.

Merry Christmas!

God bless us, every one!

coming soon!

i've been informed by a few people that my template was "hard to read" so i'm trying out yet another one and i'm ALSO using large print, so i HOPE that everyone is satisfied.

speaking of picky blog readers...ahem. i have a friend, let's call her Audrey for anonymity's sake. she lives in my town, which will remain nameless as it always has. this friend is convinced that blogging is SO unsafe. she told me, just last night that "if someone really wanted to try to find you, heidi, they could." she believes that lurkers pore over the blogs of innocent housewives, gleaning any small detail that may lead them to discover the whereabouts of these women. i'm not sure what she thinks they'll do to these bloggers, but knowing Audrey it's probably something horrendous straight from the latest episode of CSI. Audrey is the type of girl who keeps pepper spray in her shower. no joke. its there just in case someone enters her tightly locked house while she is in the middle of shampooing. she has said that once they offer the technology to put tracking chips into children, she will be the first in line to snap them up so that no predator can take her children away without being found.

oddly enough, she is a self admitted blog fan. mind you, the list of blogs that she visits daily is short, but she never hesitates to let me know when it's been too long since i've last blogged. she told me that last night, right after talking our friend dena out of starting a blog herself. she warned dena of the dangers she would be putting her family under if she decided to begin publicly chronicling her daily adventures, and then told me that it's been too long since my last post. huh.

anyhow, i'm pleased to annouce that i managed to talk dena back into starting a blog of her own (and now that its public, dena, there's no turning back!) soon i will introduce you to the adventures of a homeschooling renee zellweger lookalike who's californian accent has been replaced by the southern twang of her new state. hysterical giggles will be included.

(now please, dear dena, won't you delurk and comment already??!)

in the air there's a feeling of christmas (in large print for my friend leah)

here are a few of my favourite ornaments

and some of my favourite nativities. the one on the top right is BRAND new from my mom and dad for a housewarming gift! :) i love it.

okay, shannon & aimee (and perhaps kathy) do you remember making these angels in pioneer girls? we made them out of pasta and the little candle is a thumbtack. she's a little quirky, but i adore her !

so, there's a drawback to completing my christmas shopping so early, i've found out. i have NOTHING left to do before christmas and now i can't STAND the thought that its still 11 days away!! i said to josh the other night "i wish it was christmas TOMORROW!" he said "okay" because he is up for opening his presents like NOW, and i'm always telling him no. i almost didn't put his gifts under the tree yet because i just know he's going to be shaking them and feeling them and saying "oh, this one's a book" and " this one's a dvd" and it drives me crazy cuz he's pretty much always right.

it actually feels christmasy to me for the first time since i moved to southern california. the past few days there has been FROST on the ground (our poor plumeria isn't too happy about that) and its been really really cold in the house. our heater got fixed the other day, but we haven't really used it yet because we're sort of living in fear of our first electric bill. (our first gas bill arrived the other day and it wasn't a pretty sight.) so, tristan and i spend the mornings shivering in the living room next to the space heater, watching the thermometer slip from 60 up to 61...and ever so slowly up to 62...until it finally reaches 65 and then we turn the space heater off. have i made you feel sorry for me yet? okay, so its really not that bad. we listen to christmas music and tristan throws everything he can get his hands on onto the floor which is his newest "thing" (that and grabbing his package, which he just discovered, every now and then to make sure its still there) this morning we watched the old burl ives video "rudolph the red nosed reindeer" and tristan danced along with the elves every time a song came on. he bends his knees up and down anytime he hears music, so his little bum shakes, its the CUTEST thing.

oh darnit, my post isn't leaving spaces for the paragraphs again. my sweet mil offered to babysit tristan tomorrow so josh and i can go on a date!!! i'm terribly excited. there are no movies playing at the time we're leaving, so instead we're just going to go to borders and get coffees and sit in those comfy chairs and look at books. and i won't have to worry about my son pulling all the books off the shelves and chucking them, which he enjoys doing in the library (they love us there).

gotta get my beauty sleep...

bits & bobs

* i finally got another video to upload on tristan's picture blog, so take a peek if you'd like to see a few of his rather awkward steps. i'm pretty sure he's got a couple more teeth coming in since he's been gnawing on his fingers and drooling like crazy.

* as of yesterday i am officially FINISHED christmas shopping (insert hallelujah chorus here) i don't think i've ever been done this early! i'm getting very excited for christmas.

* friends of ours, chris and chandra just had a baby girl on sunday named abigail pearl, who i'm dying to meet and hold!

* after browsing many cool websites and finding a gazillion awesome gift ideas, i've decided that next year i'm going to do all of my christmas shopping online because there's nothing worse than driving 45 min to a store with a grumpy child, only to find that the item you wanted is out of stock.

* i have officially fallen (or perhaps jumped?) off of the weight watchers bandwagon and don't plan on jumping back on until after christmas. i just adore food TOO MUCH. besides, i only have 10 more lbs to go and once i'm finished nursing (next month) i'm hoping that those pounds will disappear along with my incredible shrinking ta ta's. i just discovered that they now make almond joy cookies. oh dear.

* it is officially cold down here in southern california and we have just realized that our heater doesn't work. lovely. i guess that means i'll have to do some christmas baking so that the oven will help to heat the house.

...so i'm off to bake some cookies!

new look

i had momentary blog envy when i first saw aimee's new template, but then i grabbed a new template for myself, so i'm happy to say my envy is gone. (bit of a pity since green is one of my colors). i'm going to work on the links part soon. i feel as if my links list didn't really reflect my reading list before, so i'm going to be editing it a bit. its raining here, which is lovely and i'm so glad its friday. i so love my man being at home.

compromise: the key to a successful marriage

josh wanted to get a 2 foot tree. i wanted to get a 4 foot tree. so we compromised and got a 5 1/2 foot tree.

sleep issues

well, you'd think by now i'd have learned, right? never EVER brag about how well your child is sleeping. it WILL come back to haunt you. for the past four nights tristan has had no night terrors and has slept soundly from 7:30pm-7:00am which is astounding for us! his 2 naps are always around 1 1/2 hours each, one at 9:30am and one at 2:30pm. yesterday he had a longer than normal morning nap (2 1/2 hours) and didn't really feel like taking an afternoon nap, so he didn't and he was the happiest little boy you ever saw until his bedtime.

pride oozed from me as i told my mom this morning how well he is doing with sleep. less than an hour after we hung up, i put tristan down for his morning nap and thought of all the wonderful things i could get done around the house while he was sleeping. i even ventured to think of a few extra things just in case his nap lasted as long as it did yesterday. 30 min after i put him to sleep, his shrill cry pierced my ears....and did not stop piercing my ears until 30 min later when i finally gave up on getting him back to sleep. i have no clue why he woke up and why he wouldn't fall back asleep. he would calm down while i was at the side of his crib, but as soon as i left the room he'd freak out. i even attempted waiting until he fell asleep to leave the room, but just when i'd think he was asleep, his eyes would fly open to see if i was still there. i finally got him up and, needless to say he was NOT a happy camper. food went flying through the air at lunchtime as he refused to eat nearly everything i put on his tray. he had 3 poopy diapers that all leaked through within an hour of each other, keeping me busy changing his AND my clothes.

then it was time to do groceries and, for once, my kid wasn't the happy little boy that everyone cooed over. he was the kid having a temper tantrum because i wouldn't let him rip my grocery list into shreds and then eat it. i ended up running out of kleenexes to keep his snotty nose from running EVERYWHERE, so he eventually had snot and tears covering most of his face as he rubbed his eyes and howled. oddly enough, once we were back in the car, he settled right down and chuckled at his friend in the mirror and played with little toys. i ended up taking the long way home just so i could calm down and breathe before unloading groceries as fast as i could while he began his snot & tearfest in the living room.

its 2pm and he is now asleep. i am not bragging about this, i am merely stating a fact. i could cry with relief. the funny thing is, i no longer feel like doing any of the wonderful things around the house that i had originally come up with. i just want to eat a big bowl of ice cream and fall asleep in front of the tv. to all you moms who have two or more little ones, i am in AWE of you. :)