Define Frustration

Arghhh...I signed up to refresh my french and my placement makes me miserable :( It's so frustrating. Yes, I graduated 15 years ago bilingual but didn't use it. I retained comprehension and pronunciation but to regurgitate? That theory is long gone. So based on the first two I got placed higher than I'm comfortable with. The whole point of me taking the course was to redo the grammar portion but now I'm looking on about.com for what on god's green earth a préposition is, sigh. There...that's my rant for today ;)

Plus this crap is impeding my stitching, bummer!

Progress

Well here's my In The Arms of an Angel as of dinner time last night with 2 weeks and change in. The blogger gods were working against me last night so I couldn't post :( Thankfully there's been a bit more progress but I decided to not tempt the fates waiting to process another picture ;)

Stitching For The Princess

One advantage to feeling like crap for the next 5 months is that I definitely have alot more time for stitching :) I set aside the ornament I have been working on in order to work a bit more on TIAG's In The Arms of an Angel. I'm pretty impressed with my progress after two weeks of work and hope to post a little picture of it this evening.

Alex and I had our first trip out baby shopping/looking and after alot of research I think we're going to definitely give cloth diapering a try with some of the new products out there. I picked up Baby C's first cloth diaper Friday at a tax free sale. It's pretty cool, it has an insert that you whip out and replace, instead of having to wash the liner and the shell. Will we be completely independant from disposable, probably not, they have their place when out and about and travelling but if we cut back our waste a little bit, it should definitely make the world a greener place :) Now to pick up a shell and soaker pack about once a month to get our supply up.

We also spotted a bedding set we absolutely adored, although considering the markup on this side of the border we'll definitely be sucking up the hit in duty and shipping, if we can get Matt on board.

It's quite amusing, I had alot of people ask if we were finding out or even to let them know if we found out the gender of our baby. So of course now that it's out there we've told people who weren't in the original group and most of those have been 'didn't you want to be surprised'. Ironic ;) Believe me, it was no less special finding out. There were no less tears of joy and quite honestly I feel the bond deepened that day beyond any bond I had while expecting my delivery day surprise son. I was actually quite jealous the other day when I was getting my hair cut and my stylist was talking about enrolling her son Logan in daycare, who is due in February. There are no more impersonal he/she's, it's, the baby, no more trivial well if it's a boy here are the names, if it's a girl here are some more...Looking for names is much more passionate, I want one that fits her, not random baby. Heck, it should also cut down on an argument or two with DH, now that we've eliminated boys names ;) So yes, I'm happy I know what we're having (even if she had have been a boy), and am even more anxious to meet her. She's not just a bun in the oven any more, she's the ultimate cake :)

It's A....

!!!!!GIRL!!!!!

Needless to say, we were all 'tickled pink' to find out. Matt took one look at that little face and instantly changed his mind about finding out. Which is good, his son has been scheming for ways that 'we' could find out and not him...who knew a nine year old would be that interested?? One of them involved bonking his dad 'lightly' over the head and asking...of course in his plan I was the one doing the bonking, lol. After two brothers and a son, I've been hoping desperately for a little less testosterone in the house, and even though the Old Wives tales were all pointing girl (verysick, high heart beat, etc), I tried hard not to get my hopes up too high.

Our little girl has all 10 fingers and toes, ok...8 fingers and 2 thumbs, is right on track with our dates, and everything else was either 'strong' or 'solid'. She's also extremely flexible, she spent most of the exam with her feet above her head and her arms either tucked behind there too or grabbing on to her toes, except for the brief moment it took her to 'wave' in another picture.

Now I can finally start picking out an SB stocking for her, I was dreading that task if it was a boy, with stockings for Matt, Alex, my dad and maybe someday my brother's all picked out I was running out of nice boy stockings that didn't have the ridiculous hand dyed perle cotton that made an already expensive project insane. I can also go back to some guilt free stitching with my L&L In the arms of an angel and Mirabilia's Mother's Bliss, those two pieces can now stay up much longer in the nursery :) I've also avoided the conundrum concerning the pink arm chair we inherited. It's been here in the 'office' for awhile and fit in with the neutral colour scheme, it's perfect for late night feedings (daytime I see myself in our extremely comfortable reclining furniture in the living room) but pink didn't work for a boy and it's actually a style that's pretty hard to find a slip cover for...and reupholstering was crazy expensive, especially over a silly colour. At least we dodged that bullet ;)

Let the shopping begin! :)

Sponge Bob Scary Pants

Apparently we were able to make Sponge Bob look a little scary ;) It's almost a personal challenge each year to take a cute and innocent costume and make it creepy for Alex. So this year it was either a haunted pumpkin or this ;) In the past he's been a haunted warlock, a haunted crayon, etc...

Hopefully the new baby will want to be a cute little skeleton or bumblebee...or may I dream of a princess? Only time will tell.