Posted in Life, Little Miss, Travel on 03/04/2010 08:00 am by Emily
Well hello there! Long time no see…
I wish I had the time to tell you all about this amazing trip but I didn’t bring the laptop and borrowed time is too precious.
I can say that the flight was good, the stewardesses amazing, Ping Pong delicious and that red dress just as gorgeous as I thought. I can say that the recession seemed to give the people of Britain some sort of electic shock therapy because not a single day has gone by without helpful, charming, friendly people.
I can also say that lunch with the ladies I used to work with made my soul sing and the group gathering at the pub on Sunday pulled at my heartstrings. Oh and did you hear, Canada won the hockey?
There hasn’t been an epiphany – its been more like climbing back into bed with an old lover who knows what you need more than you do.
My daughter is a charming travel companion ( just like her father, who I miss more and more each day) and we haven’t really stopped since our feet touched the tarmac but its been delightful (if not a touch exhausting).
I can’t believe I leave in a week.
Off to the pub for dinner…
Ta-ta for now!
em xoxo
Posted in Life, motherhood on 02/23/2010 03:36 pm by Emily
I do not like asking for help. I like to “just” get things done – no muss, no fuss and usually I do just fine. Obviously that “usually” was before I had a baby. Now getting anything done is a small miracle so when I found myself with a messy house, a mountain of laundry, 8000 errands, some Spilt Milk Mom posts, the need for a haircut and a sick baby I was beside myself. So I picked up the phone and bribed my mum with baby time to drive the four hours each way to come and stay for a day so I have the help I need. It felt weird but also slightly elating – I’m not going to have to struggle with all of this on my own. Plus with my newfound mama ability to utilize time much more wisely I can get WAY more done in less time. And being less stressed means I’ll be a better mama and wife than before. Maybe this help thing isn’t such a bad idea afterall!
Posted in Cool stuff, Life on 02/12/2010 01:05 pm by Emily
This has been an unusually busy week for us (and I don’t do busy well) but all for good reason, the Olympics is here don’t you know!
On Monday morning the torch just happened to swing past our house which meant that we just had to see it! We invited some friends over for an “Olympic” breakfast at 7:30 and then at 8am we headed up the street to see the torch:
Seeing the torch upped my Olympic temperature from lukewarm to slightly raised so we decided to head over to the local events center to check out the official torch celebrations.
With, you know, several thousands of our closest friends.
A friendly sea of red!
I loved this sign one of the elementary kids made:
And there was a fantastic portable theatre space from Slovakia:
We got to “share” the flame:
And cheer Canada on…
In the evening we managed to grab last minute tickets to watch a friendly match between the Russian and Slovakian Womens Olympic teams (Russia won 4/0) but the day of celebrating was a wee bit too much for someone:
Posted in Life, Little Miss on 02/08/2010 10:58 am by Emily
I don’t think I ever got around to posting pics of the nursery so here’s one we took to help with house selling (made me realise we need a rug!) We decorated the room ourselves and my mum and I (she did 90% of the work) made all the crib bedding, the roman blinds and recovered the chair in the damask print. She did an AMAZING job!
Some of my favourite things in this room?
- Name print above the crib from Penny People Designs
- 3 Sprouts Elephant storage bin in far right corner
- Giant Monkey (on chair) by BlaBla Kids
- Owl (top left corner of the wall shelf) by b.delicious
- The “A” and “Z” bookends whose’s colour spouted the whole design (and who Benjamin Moore used to create the wall colour for me!)
- The adorable (and perfectly matched) wooden mobile which was a gift from the owner of a local toy store just after we found out we were having a girl (no idea who its by!)
- All the old school Fisher Price toys once belonged to Husbando or me
Posted in Fashion, Life, motherhood, reviews on 02/04/2010 01:56 pm by Emily
I recently experienced TWO (I know!) fantastic customer service experiences from businesses started by moms. Is that a coincidence?
The first one came from See Kai Run. I had ordered Little Miss several pairs of (totally adorable) half price shoes during their December sale. By the middle of January I figured something must be up so I emailed them and asked them what was going on with my order. I very quickly received an email back apologizing and explaining that it seemed they had experienced a technical glitch when I placed my order that charged me but didn’t schedule my order to be fulfilled. Sadly because this hadn’t been discovered the shoes I had ordered were now all sold out. They apologized again and then offered me two different ways they could remedy the situation. They could either refund my credit card immediately or I could choose ANY three pairs of replacement shoes from the site – email them the size and styles and they would ship them to me right away. I chose the shoes (um hello!) and was able to order Little Miss these adorable shoes:
There was never any question or debate that they were going fix the problem – they admitted it was their mistake and immediately remedied it – making me tres happy and an ongoing customer.
My second great experience was with Mally Bibs. My grandmother had sent Little Miss some money for Christmas and had asked we get her something special with it. After much thought I decided that it would be sweet to get her one of the personalized Mally Bibs – I could chose the design (I love their old heart and crossbones design), the colours (her nursery colours of course) and have her name put on it.
With their custom design studio you choose the colour for the front, the pattern on the front, the main colour for the back, the colour of the pocket on the back and the colour of the name. I wanted the colour on the back to match the pink of the heart pattern on the front and thought I got it right – until the bib arrived and I realized that the colours on my screen weren’t the same as the bib.
Now I know that I am probably one of the only people that would notice but when you pay $50 for a bib you want it to be exactly how you want it to be and I knew it would bug me every time I looked at it. So I emailed Mally Bibs and explained the situation and asked if there was anything that could be done.
I received an email back very quickly from them saying that although they usually charge for changes and repairs they could see how similar the colours looked on the screen so if I sent the bib back to them they would fix it for me for FREE!
This is all in stark contrast to the service I’m receiving from my insurance company as I try and get our beloved iMac replaced after it was damaged. Do mom businesses better understand their customers (mostly other moms) better? Are they more sympathetic? Or do they better understand that moms are more likely to talk to other moms about their experiences and therefore one bad experience can have an outreaching impact? Whatever the answer this is one mom who is very grateful that they are more clued in and that both See Kai Run & Mally Bibs made my life easier! Thanks!
Posted in Life on 02/03/2010 02:40 pm by Emily
But this week is keeping me busy by sucking some serious ass.
Little Miss is sick, waking four to six times a night and generally being the Mayoress of Snotville.
Husbando’s working six days this week as well as having his hours rearranged for the Olympics at the last minute and because of said Olympics can no longer drive into work so on top of all the rearranging and rescheduling (and never seeing him) I now have to drive him to and from the Skytrain – 25 minutes away each way, twice a day AND he’s been told they want him to work every Friday night (this is in addition to every Saturday night and Sunday day.) That sound you hear is our social life crashing and burning.
Add to that the fact that our beloved iMac has DIED (obviously right after I moved ALL of our photos from the last FIVE YEARS to it so they would be in one place for me to back them up – the move happened but the back up didn’t) and despite being covered by our insurance the insurance company think that I agreed to a ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR deductible which I have NEVER had a house insurance deductible that high because, well, quite simply, most things in our house are worth far less than one thousand dollars so I don’t see the point of having a deductible worth more than something that might break.
And with the house on the market we are living in a show home where I can’t for the life of me find anything because we’ve hidden it away to look minimalist (with a five and half month old – HA!)
My sanity, and apparently my body (Now with added benefit of scratchy throat, achy muscles and itchy eyes!) are both abandoning me.
Dear this week – please leave me alone and pick on someone else. The sleep deprivation is making me crazy and I can’t be held responsible for my actions.
Lots of love,
Em xoxo
Posted in Giveaways, Life, motherhood, spilt milk moms on 02/01/2010 10:16 pm by Emily
Over at Spilt Milk Moms I’ve just reviewed the incredibly helpful momAgenda wall calendar and we have one to give away! So if you’re looking for a way to make mommy life a wee bit easier go enter now!
Posted in Life, Weightloss on 01/24/2010 03:03 pm by Emily
This morning, for the first time in over 18 months I went running. To say I’ve been putting it off would be an understatement but with the disaster that was my knees after the 30 day Shred in No-No-No-November I was a little wary but lately several friends have started back up their running and its inspired me to get out there (although not enough to get off the couch evidently!) I’ve lost almost 10 lbs in the last 2-ish weeks by changing my diet and I know I can lose more if I exercise but I was pretty disinterested – I wanted some sort of sign that my body was ready to do this.
Last night it seemed that every time I closed my eyes I dreamt about running. Running 10k races, running in Battersea park, running by my house, crossing finish lines – lots of different scenarios but always running. So this morning when I woke up I decided to give it a go. It was great – it wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty but I was out there and as any new mother can tell you – just getting out there is a massive achievement. I actually enjoyed it – I’m sure I’ll hurt tomorrow but I’m already looking forward to doing it again on Tuesday. Looks like I got my sign after all.
*This is a phrase I would love to hear Little Miss say some day!
Posted in Life, Little Miss, motherhood on 01/21/2010 01:50 pm by Emily
Turns out Little Miss was more than ready to try solids.
Despite all the books saying that you have to be patient and the first time they may not even have more than a mouthful she finished the entire amount (1 tbsp of cereal mixed with breastmilk) and when I doubled the amount the next day she finished that as well. She’s still not entirely convinced about the taste – which leads to the most hilarious expressions – but she’s definitely into this food thing. Actually she stunned me today when she grabbed the spoon from my hand and then put it into her own mouth. I was literally speechless. She doesn’t quite have enough dexterity to get it in every time but she wants to so I don’t think it will be too long till she’s feeding herself all the time.
I tried to add a morning feeding but, to be honest, she’s never that hungry in the morning (probably because I desperately shove my boob in her mouth to try and get an extra hour of sleep when she first wakes) and it was just starting to feel rushed so I’m going to stick with just the evening feed for now and see how we go. She’s not overly keen on thicker foods so I’m keeping it pretty liquidy for now but I’m just really glad I listened to my gut and gave it a go.
And I thought you might like to see how it all went:
PS – If you haven’t already weighed in about Who’s In Your Reader please, please, please do – I really want to know!
Posted in Life, Little Miss, motherhood on 01/17/2010 09:44 pm by Emily
Today we fed Little Miss her first solids. And my heart broke a little bit.
Over the last couple of weeks Little Miss has taken a very large interest in whatever we’re eating. She’ll watch us put food into our mouths – tracking every second – she’s tried to grab porridge from our breakfast bowls and the other day she, literally, took my water bottle out of my mouth and tried to drink from it. This new awareness of food has been joined by a lack of sleep – she wakes a number of times in the night and is absolutely starving each time. She actually snorts when she’s presented with the breast she’s so hungry.
I asked a bunch of friends how and when they weaned their children but most of them stuck to the six month rule and I was very much hoping to keep her on the boob until after I got back from my trip so I kept putting what I thought out of my head. But after a particularly bad night last night I decided that time-lines be damned, my child was HUNGRY and it was time to move things on.
So today we fed Little Miss her first solids. She was a little alarmed to begin with but quickly gobbled it all up – and I mean ALL of it. Despite the fact that everything I read said “Don’t expect them to finish the first serving completely” she ate every. last. drop. And then drained my boob.
And in one very simple, expected, necessary step my little baby – the one that snuggled to my breast to feed, who fell asleep while feeding filling my nostrils with the heady scent of new. little. baby – morphed into something bigger, someone more independent someone who would eat real food and it made me cry.
