I’ve been trying to keep up with the Olympics, and watching as many of the live competitions as possible. It’s hard, though, as I’m sure many of you know, since many of them are being held during the wee hours of the night. I saw most of Michael Phelps’ gold medal swims, and most of May-Marsh’s volleyball wins, and even most of the gymnastics routines. However, it has become increasingly hard for me during the tail end of the Olympics to keep up, given Bean’s bedtime routine. Dave and I have decided to start introducing her to a regular bedtime routine — bath at 10:30pm, last dinner feeding, then off to bed in our bedroom in her bassinet. By 11:30p to midnight, she should be sound asleep, and shouldn’t wake up until 10:30am the next day except two or three times to feed during the middle of the night. It has gone very well over the last week. She still protests when I put her down and leave her alone in our bedroom in the dark (”SQUAWK!! HOLD ME, LOVE ME!!!”) but the squawks have become less in frequency and duration, so we can’t complain. She’s been treating me very well during late-night feedings, only awake long enough to eat, and then I put her down after her burp and a diaper change. All done within half an hour. What an adorable, lovely child we have.

Anyway, the Olympics. Did you hear about the latest rumored scam from the Chinese? Apparently, a few of their athletes were given fake birth certificates in order to compete, specifically in the gymnastics competition. At least one of the girls is apparently only 13 years old, and you have to be at least 16 to compete in the Olympics. If it’s true (and forgive me, I haven’t really researched this rumor thoroughly yet), it’s rather sad. The Chinese is in top standing as far as gold medals go, and we all know how dedicated they are when they put their minds on something. But geez, not at the hands of cheating. It just puts down the whole Olympics altogether. It’s sad. To me, this is as highly intolerable as athletes taking steroids or taking diet pills that work just to lose weight to compete. Come on, that’s not what the Olympics is about. It’s about friendly sportsmanship, being the best you can be naturally, working hard, going for the gold for the world (and not just for your country).

Anyway, I’m still enjoying the games. I can’t wait to watch May-Marsh’s finals tonight!

The 2008 Summer Olympics is coming very, very soon. Just mere days. I am very excited about this, actually, as I have been following the summer olympics ever since I can remember. I loved watching the opening ceremony and then the closing ceremony, and every sport in between. I love almost all the sports that are displayed, and I love seeing the world come together to fight in friendly competition. The way I see it, if we concentrate on sports as a competition, we would probably have less wars and political bullshit that we have today. All that aggression would come out readily and steadily and healthily in the form of exercise. It’s awesome.

This year, the politics in the air is pretty smelly. With China hosting the summer games this time around, it’s really crazy. I am so torn about all of this. I think that it’s crazy that there have been so much violent protests concerning China being the host. I applaud those who want to protest, but terrorism and war in the name of “peace” isn’t peaceful at all. I don’t agree with what China is doing with Tibet and their people being in such dire living conditions, but seriously… how is hurting the one event that brings the world together going to make China’s government “learn” their lesson? It’s just going to harm and kill more innocent people. It just puts a whole damper on things. It’s uncalled for. And it gives China a reason to fight back with more force and violence. Heightened security, police brutality, all the works. It’s not pretty. It saddens me when I see this in the news.

But regardless of all that, I am rooting for all the hard-working athletes who are participating in the summer games. They’ve all worked butt ass hard and they deserve this spotlight without fear. I’m looking forward to seeing all the games.

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So today is some sort of Canadian holiday, though I haven’t been keeping up with it because everyday is a holiday now — no work and with a newborn everyday seems like the last. This morning was more difficult, but now she is asleep and we have some time to ourselves. Now, I don’t even know what to do with myself when she’s sleeping. It seems my world now revolves around feeding her, burping her, changing her, and cleaning her. In between all of those, making goo-goo ga-ga noises and faces at her to get her to smile and laugh. My world is officially babyfied. Heh.

There are a lot of sitting around and waiting right now. With me moving officially to Canada, I’m just waiting for my paperwork to fall through. After that, I have all these things to take care of, including getting a new car insurance in Canada, changing my address, possibly looking for another job (sooner rather than later, though I’m not sure yet), establishing a bank, maybe getting a new car or switching my current one over to Canadian standards, updating my fast pass passport across the border, etc. The list seems to go on and on. But right now, it’s the waiting game. I can do the waiting game, especially since I don’t have to do much but wait. Being patient seems to be the name of the game that is my life now.

I must go now. I’m waiting for her to wake up and announce that she’s again hungry. The girl is going through a huge growth spurt.

I have these random thoughts of significance that I want to post on this site, but whenever I’m in front of the computer (which is rarely these days, given the fact that a newborn baby wants to feed every. two. hours. geez.), I forget what they are. I should have something like a tape recorder with me at all times so I can just make random notes to myself or something. I think I’m in dire need of a vacation soon, as my days are blending in with one another… sleeping whenever I can, eating whenever I can, checking email whenever I can. Maybe a holiday outing at one of those Caribbean villa rentals would suit us nicely, eh.

One of these days, Dave and I will have to test going out to eat with a newborn. The very thought makes me kind of nervous — anything can go wrong! What if she needs to get changed (do I excuse myself and her and head to the bathroom?)? What if she wants a boob (I am not yet comfortable with the idea of having to breastfeed in public… I don’t know how anyone does that?)? What if she needs to burp and is fussy in the restaurant? What if she wants to cuddle? What if she needs her outfit changed? So many things that could easily be fixed and dealt with in the comfort of our own home.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to go to the beach for some family time and fun in the sun. Hopefully it will go well. I’m tired just thinking about it. Heh.

Dave and I are still trying to get used to a new schedule. We’re not entirely sure what type of schedule we want to be on. I think we would prefer that Lily Bean sleeps during the night, but considering how we’re both night owls, I’m not sure that’s conducive to our personal tastes. Right now, she is almost always wide awake between the times of 1am and 5am. Dave has been taking that shift, feeding her with bottled boobie milk that I make for him during the day time. I end up catching up on my sleep during that time, since every other time I have to be awake to feed her every two to three hours. It’s really quite weird. We’ll see what type of schedule we need to be on and can be on as the time goes. It seems like everyday is different, though that is to be expected with a newborn. I can’t imagine doing this for mothers who already have a toddler and have a newborn added to the family. My sister-in-law, Kami (I love her!), will be going through that, and I imagine it will be very hard. I think I will be offering help when the time comes for her. Having a 3y/o and a newborn at the same time while your husband works is not going to be easy. Oi.

And in the middle of all that, we have to keep up with our weekly chores. Laundry has more or less doubled in size — all her spit ups and accidents and stuff like that. Though with the size of most of her clothes, we can let it pile so that we only do her laundry once a week. Would be a waste of water otherwise… washing and drying itty bitty sized clothes so often. I’ve been trying to keep up with vacuuming and cleaning her room (not too difficult, since she’s not old enough to make a mess haha). The only thing that isn’t yet touched is her crib, since she’s been sleeping in the bassinet next to us every day and night. Her crib bedding doesn’t need to be changed at all. It’s spotless and like new.

Housework was always challenging. With an extra kid, it’s just extra fun. Sense the sarcasm there? Heh.

Yesterday, Dave and I went to see the new Batman movie… The Dark Knight or something like that. We went because it was our official first year wedding anniversary. Wow, a whole year! We haven’t been to the movies in a very long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, spending time with the husband outside of the house. The movie was pretty awesome. It was the best Batman movie ever made, seriously. The other ones in the past have been very cheesy. Even the best one was borderline cheesy. This one was definitely an “adult” Batman movie. I wouldn’t recommend it to young kids, or even younger adolescents. It’s a pretty twisted plot. Even Dave was impressed, and he hardly gets impressed over a movie. Heath Ledger was totally awesome in it. It’s too bad that he passed, as this role he played was definitely the highlight of his career. What an actor! I totally believed the twisted, insane, psychotic Joker that he played. Pretty creepy guy. Didn’t look like the actor at all. I wonder who would play the next Joker if this series of Batman continues. That actor is going to have big shoes to fill.

I’ve been keeping contact with my best friend from work, Jenbug. She’s been updating me every so often regarding some of my clients and how they’re doing, that she knows of. It’s so neat to know how clients are doing. Some of them I wonder if they’re doing better or worse than when I last left them (I expect some of them are probably going through some type of foreclosure). We were looking up the jail roster in town and it was so depressing to find a few of my old clients on the list. Past clients getting arrested and are now in jail. I’m so bummed about it. It really sucks. I always wish these people well after I leave them, and as much as I can, I believe and visualize that I’m leaving them in a better place than when I met them. Sometimes it’s not true. Sometimes, things screw up no matter how much goodness I visualize. I can only hope that they make it through whatever milestone they are experiencing in their lives.

Well, on that depressing note, I’m gonna take a quick shower before Lily Bean wakes up for another feeding.

Boy, this site is getting harder and harder to update. I’ve been doing the majority of my daily blog updates at Lily Bean’s site. Everything seems to revolve around this little girl of ours now. It’s kind of weird how much our lives have changed, and how our schedules take on a whole new avenue. I remember what it was like (since it was just like, a week and a half ago.. haha) when Dave and I could spontaneously leave the house for a quick dinner and a movie. Now, we have to plan the movie, seeing as how I can’t imagine how we would bring a newborn with us inside a theatre. Disaster waiting to happen. But then we think about how on Earth we would even want to leave Lily Bean for two hours at a time. My heart sometimes hurts just going to sleep because I wouldn’t be conscious to croon over her. I know, it’s silly, but we’re still in the honeymoon “we’re so in love” stage. I hope it never goes away, to be honest.

So now every time we want to go out, or have to go out (like to a doctor’s visit, or shopping for some odds and ends), we have to spend at least 24 hours planning it, making sure we pack things for the baby bag — enough diapers? cream? foodage? bottle? or boob? blanket in case she gets cold? socks? hat? wipes? etc. You get the idea.

Everything I’m doing now revolves around her, so I feel like I have nothing much to say on this site in particular. Heh. I’ve been catching up on a lot of rest. Dave’s been happily waiting on me hand and foot (he’s SO good to me!!) so that I can take time to heal and rest. Having the husband home with a newborn is sooo beneficial. We’re bonding so much as a family. It’s such an amazing experience, especially with a first newborn. I’m so glad we were able to both take at least 3 or 4 months off like this. Every so often, he and I would look at each other, smile, and give each other a nice, big ol’ hug. Creating a baby sure makes you fall in love with someone all over again. At my very worst, he loves me. During contractions, he loves me. During labor, he loves me. During my days-after-the-hospital-when-I-couldn’t-shower, he still loves me. When my belly is protuding, he loves me. When it’s flabby and weird and bandaged up and scarred after childbirth, he loves me. When I can’t even get into the tub by myself, he still loves me. I can see it in his eyes. He adores me and he respects me.

He was telling me how amazed and impressed he was with me during the whole childbirth thing. He said I never screamed once, and I always had a good sense of humor, cracking jokes even during the worst contractions. He said he had trouble understanding how severe labor pains were because I was so good-natured about it all. Heh. He said I didn’t complain once, I didn’t get angry once, and I was always very polite with everyone I met and talked to, including all the nurses and the doctors. I was wondering before the whole birth what I would be like during labor — a screamer? (I had thought so, but I guess not) a whiner? a crier? Dave said that although I reported the pains, I wasn’t whining about them. I did cry a couple of times though, which really made it hit home for him.

Anyway, Lily Bean is going to get up and ask for another feeding pretty soon. I better get going. Hope you’re having an awesome Monday. Everyday bleeds into the next for me now. Heh. I forget what days are which!

(I’m looking into getting one of those Santa Fe dehumidifiers… anyone have any experience with them?)

So, if you haven’t heard, I’ve given birth. I’m no longer “tired pregnant lady.” Now, I’m just “tired lady.” Heh. All the details of the birth and stuff are located at Bean’s site, if you’re interested. In the meantime, let me pass on a bit of weird story telling I’ve collected from my time at the hospital during the last 4 days. In the maternity post-partum room I was staying in, I had to share the room with two other beds. One bed kept rotating in and out, with new mothers leaving before I did (due to them having natural births versus c-sections, like I did), while the other bed was occupied by the same new mother for as long as I was there. This new mother was incredibly… how do I say… inappropriate.

Dude. She must have been all but in her late teens, and her boyfriend who also happened to be the baby daddy to her new son, was also there with her. The baby was taken away primarily because he had a little heart murmur, but I think the real reason is (after eavesdropping on several of their conversations and hearing what the nurses had talked to them about across the hall from my bed, etc.) that the hospital was concerned about child neglect and abuse. The girl presented as borderline retarded, and the boy didn’t seem much more intelligent than that. The first day and a half, the baby didn’t get fed because the girl “tried” breast feeding a “couple of times” (according to her), and got discouraged because the milk wasn’t coming in (duh, it’s only the first day!). So then she just didn’t feed the poor kid, from what I gathered. She didn’t even ask for the nurse to come in and give the baby some formula (like any sane mother would do if she was concerned her breast milk wasn’t coming in to give sustenance to her baby). When the hospital found this out, I think they had to investigate and see if the couple had the capacity and ability to parent appropriately. The pediatrician on duty was called and she asked them a whole bunch of questions about her possible drug and alcohol consumption and/or abuse during pregnancy, and whether or not they were feeding the baby. The girl slurred her speech and was really low affect, so it was concerning. The baby was taken away and was put in an incubator for a couple of nights, hence prolonging their stay at the hospital, hence why I had them for as long as I did. Her labor was natural too, so she should’ve just had to stay one night.

Then one day, their whole extended family came to visit. Literally, like, it felt like an episode of “Trailer Trash Boys” exploded in my hospital room. There were about 10 visitors there, and they were all bragging about how they were all wasted last night. Even the grandmother inappropriately was going on and on in this weird southern hick accent about how she was completely wasted on Crown Royal the night before. The nurse later on came in to ask how everything was going, really casually, and the girl responded, “Oh, I’m a little drunk.” And the nurse had to do a double take and ask again, “Wait, wha..?” The girl said she was depressed because she was kept against her will at the hospital cuz they wouldn’t release her with her baby. The girl was also bragging to her friends earlier the previous day about smoking during contractions to relieve the pain. Dude. Geez. As much as the contractions were killing me, never once did it occur to me to smoke throughout it. What the hell.

Anyway, that was a little weird. It made my stay that much more annoying, knowing another newborn born the same day as our Lily Bean was being treated this way. It just makes me sad.

But on to happier notes, we are so in love with this beautiful baby girl of ours. We can’t stop staring at her. The faces and expressions she makes are just so classic. We’ve got a camera literally permanently shoved in her face, poor thing. Heh. We’re trying to get a normal schedule going, or as normal as we can make it now. I’m thinking of getting some more laptop memory for both of our laptops, but that may not come for a while. Right now, everything revolves around Lily. :D

I am beyond exhausted. So far, I’ve only been able to get about 5 hours of sleep. Bean woke me up at around 4a (when her daddy decided it was time for his bedtime too), and she was so active that I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I stayed in bed until about 6:30a before I gave up and decided that I was really, really, really hungry. So now I’m making breakfast (rice with mangos and spam… mmmmm!!). Tink is up too and she looks confused as to why I’m interrupting her daily “alone time.” Heh.

I am pooped. Pooped. We have a lunch date with Chonifer (hehe) this afternoon, so maybe after breakfast I can get a cat nap before waking up to get ready for lunch? I don’t know. Or maybe play with some of my toys (aka photoshop and illustrator.. hehe). We’ll see. Tiiirreeddddd…

In other awesome news, I’m going to be making Wordpress premade themes to sell with Teesa. Look forward to them being there on that site if you’re interested. First come first serve, you snooze you lose: each layout will only be sold once!

What another beautiful day to wake up to. How lovely to be alive right now. With all this free time, I am finally catching up to doing things I love to do without feeling guilty for neglecting to write work reports (since I’m all done with those darn reports!). I’ve been drawing a lot lately, and doodling (as you can see from all the new website designs I’ve been making). I’ve caught the doodling bug.

Dave and I have been sleeping very, very late these past few weeks, since we can. Since we’re both on our leave, we’ve very quickly resorted back to our old night owl ways. Neither of us are morning people, and we become our most creative after the sun comes down. This was troubling four our creative side when we were both working, since we had to go to bed early to wake up early. But now, it seems like we do our best artsy and project work after midnight. Hence, we each go to bed around 4am or 5am. Sometimes Husband doesn’t even hit the sack until about 8am. (That’s when I get breakfast in bed.. hee hee.) So now people don’t hear from us until at least well after 1p or 2p. And then the day starts all over. Interestingly, we both thrive on being vampires. Weird, huh? At least it’ll be easier for us to wake up in the middle of the night after Bean is born, to feed and keep her company and coax her and stuff when she’s crying.

I am so excited for Bean. This Saturday is her due date, and we have no way of telling if she’s going to be here before then, or after. We shall see. Last night she was very, very active, kicking up a storm. Dave saw all the tumbling and rolling around, and at some points, she even had her limbs out — a fist here or a foot there. It was so cool!