Happy Halloween!

I just want to take the time to wish all you ghouls and goblins a Happy Halloween!

Five Little Pumpkins

FIVE LITTLE PUMPKINS

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate,

The first one said,

“Oh my, it’s getting late.

The second one said,

“There are witches in the air!”

The third one said,

“But I don’t care.”

The fourth one said,

“Let’s run and run and run.”

The fifth one said,

“I’m ready for some fun!”

WHOOSH went the wind,

And out went the lights!

The five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!

Image from splitcoaststampers.com

5 New Things That Surprised Me After Giving Birth

When I first started writing this blog, I had wrote a post on 5 things that surprised me after giving birth to my daughter.  They included what my stomach looked like, people asking if she was a boy or a girl and a few others.  So when I gave birth to my son, I thought “Hey, I know what it will be like.”  Wrong-O!  Like every pregnancy is different, every post-pregnancy is different too.  So here are my new 5 Things That Surprised Me After Giving Birth.

1. My Skin.  All throughout my pregnancy with the Rainbow, my skin was perfect.  Nary a blemish to be had.  As soon as he graced us with his presence, my skin went haywire.  I started breaking out in full on teenage zits.  Every day there would be new ones and I would be saying “What the hell is going on.” Turns out, hormones are to blame and my doctor said once we stop breastfeeding it will all clear up.
2. My Hair.  After my daughter was born, hair fell out.  I could run my fingers through it and cat sized hair clumps would be in my hands.  My stylist said that was normal so I this time I braced myself for the inevitable hair loss.  Nope.  This time my hair didn’t fall out.  It went greasy beyond belief.  Need oil for your car? Not to worry, come take some from my hair free of charge.  Again pesky hormones are to blame.
3. Weight Loss.  I gained a whopping 40 lbs with my daughter and lets just say I still have that baby weight hanging on like a bad boyfriend.  However, with my son, I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight within a week.  Granted I only gained approximately 10 lbs with him but I lost it fairly easily and quickly.
4. My Appetite.  After my daughter was born, I found my appetite diminished.  Perhaps because I was adjusting to life as a new Mom that I barely remembered to eat.  The complete opposite with my son.  Good Lord, as soon as I gave birth I was begging for food.  I have never been so damned hungry before in my life.  All day I am hungry.  If I don’t eat, I get what I like to call “hangry.” A cranky mix of hungry and angry.  I chalk it up to breastfeeding a very hungry little boy.  Breastfeeding can burn up to 800 calories a day so I am blaming the increased appetite on that.
5. The Recovery Time of a Second C-Section.  I’ve had 2 c-sections and I was luckily given advice from my aunt that post surgery, try to get up and stand straight up as soon as possible.  With my daughter, it took my a least a month to be feeling somewhat normal.  My scar took forever to heal, but I only had 1 baby to worry about so my days were fairly easy going. When I had my son though, I was feeling back to normal within 10 days.  The nurses gave me grief at the hospital because I had my surgery at midnight and by noon I was asking them to unhook me and let me get up and move around.  Generally for a c-section you have to stay 3 days in the hospital, I was released after 1 day.  I was still slow moving the first week, but I was healed up by that Friday.  It still sucked going from laying down to standing up for about a week, but with my second c-section, I was up and going pretty quick.  I think it was because I had 2 children to chase after.

Wordless Wednesday

Hubby may murder me for this one, but gawd I LOATHE HOCKEY and he is a HUGE FAN.  And what’s worse, he likes the Toronto Maple Leafs! Booooooooo.

Image c/o http://www.memecenter.com

Witches Hat Cookies

Now that the Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone and people hopefully have room in their stomachs for some treats, I have an easy Halloween Cookie treat that everyone of all ages will enjoy.  You don’t have to make the cookies yourself so I wouldn’t really call this a ‘recipe’ per say.  Anyways, they are delicious, fun and super simple.

INGREDIENTS 

• Striped fudge shorbread cookies (for this to work, you need cookies that have a chocolate fudge layer on the bottom
• Icing
• Hershey Kisses
• Food colouring

 

DIRECTIONS 

1. Take the food colouring and mix in with the icing to create your favourite Halloween colours.  I used orange and green.
2. Flip over the cookies so the fudge side is up.
3. Unwrap the Hershey Kisses and put only a little icing on the bottom.  You only need enough to hold the kiss to the cookie and create a little coloured rim.
4. Enjoy.

Image from modernchristianhomemaker.com

Wordless Wednesday

I remember the year that I got to sit at the adult table.

Image from girltomom.com

Catching Up

Sorry I’ve been MIA lately.  A few weeks ago my computer broke so I wasn’t able to post anything.  But that doesn’t mean lots of fun things haven’t happened in the meantime.

First of all, I will announce the winners of the Toronto Fall Home Show contest.  2 of my Twitter followers @JubleeW and @40somethngbride each won 2 tickets to go visit the Toronto Fall Home Show this passed weekend.  I hope they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

My children are growing up so fast it is scary.  The Princess is now in Senior Kindergarten and we’ve already been to birthday parties galore and they were switched into a bigger classroom due to an addition of 14 new students.  There was originally 3 JK/SK classes but they got amalgamated into 2, going from 15 kids in one class to a whopping 29.  The parent reps threw a “Healthy Breakfast Party” where all the parents and children got to come to school early and have breakfast together and see the new classroom.   She is loving school, and making new friends.  This morning however she had a bit of a breakdown.  I had just finished dropping her off, and was turning around to go for my morning walk with the Rainbow when I heard my little girl screeching and crying.

“Moommmmmyyyy,” she wailed, tears running down her face. “I want to stay home with you.”

“Oh Honey, I know you do but you have to go to school and learn.”

“But I want to come home with you! I love you so much.”

“I love you too Boo Boo.”

I walked her back to the door and her teacher complimented her outfit and that was all it took for her for her to go in the school.  Typical girl.

Our Rainbow is doing really well too.  He is now 3 months and weighing in at 17.1 lbs.  He had his first laugh a few weeks ago and has recently discovered his toes and ears.  He is also moving around.  I’ll put him down for a nap in one position and he has somehow turned himself into a completely different one.  This morning while he was playing on his play mat, I walked into the other room to get the Princess dressed for school and when I came back, he had twisted himself up into some acrobatic move with his legs in the air.  I feel like it won’t be too much longer before he is crawling if not running around my house keeping me on my toes.

Lastly, we attended a friend’s wedding in Quebec and both kids had a great time getting dressed up, riding a train and staying in a hotel.  Hubby and I however determined that for the next wedding, maybe it would be best to leave the kids with a sitter.  I never thought how difficult it would be to get 4 people dressed and convince the two youngest to stay clean.

Mother Goose Monday – Brother John

Brother John

Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?

Brother John? Brother John?

Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!

Ding, daing, dong. Ding, daing, dong.

My rainbow sleeping soundly

 

Bibliothèque Nationale  1775