Babysitting both girls today. They both napped at the same time. Edzea is being the difficult one today. She has been cranky ever since she woke up. I’m not sure what the issue is but it will be nice when Daddy comes home to provide his comic relief to her!!
So, Daddy came home and Edzea was so cranky that we decided to put her into her bath right away. She wouldn’t eat and we are guessing it’s teething again…so Tylenol, bath…and she zonked out in the bath she was SOOOOO tired.
Quick note. Here are some pics of Edzèa in cute outfits. We’ve been busy between packing and doing various things getting ready to take possession of new house next Wednesday. The weather is warming up. The bottom video is just a few clips of her pulling up and saying Mama.
These are pics of a little chair that I picked up for Edzea and meant to re-cover but hadn’t gotten around to it…she likes it anyways!
On Tuesday we went to the pool with two of her friends, Henry & Emily. She loves the water of course! and doesn’t feel the cold…even without her wetsuit. I had her in a little pink one-piece and a woman came up to me with her son and asked if she was a boy or a girl…
I put her whole face under the water for the first time using the waterbabies class technique. She was ok with it but kept her eyes open and didn’t like the feeling of the chlorine in her eyes too much so we only did it a couple of times.
She refused to let go of the ball that we “found” amongst the toys at the pool so the ball had a shower with us/got changed with us and played in the playpen with us while Mommy got dressed. I call her my little dragon as she hoardes her toys and won’t give them up. Her latest thing is to crawl away with the toy in her mouth if she can hold it there and get away from whoever is chasing her. It’s her FAVOURITE game!!!
Here are some miscellaneous clips from the past couple of weeks. Enjoy.
Well, we had our house inspection completed yesterday. The house is fine. Subjects were removed today so…we will be the proud owners of a new beautiful house on April 1st…no joke!
I took a few pics of the interior yesterday so that I could figure out which areas need painting the most and also what we might need for extra furniture. Tim LOVES that I’m doing this!
I just wanted to add a few views that aren’t on the Coldwell Banker website for family to see if you are interested. These are pictures of the back area on the bottom floor looking out kitchen/patio windows as well as the view towards the front of the house. The RED curved wall is going to be painted a different colour. Colour choices in this place are ALMOST as bad as in our current house. Dad’s coming in April to remedy this problem YAY!
So Edzèa ate a crayon yesterday while I was visiting Tracey for a playdate. It seems that Markham put the crayons into the toy box, Edzèa, found a blue one-it’s a beginner crayon which looks like a round plastic toy and she thought it was quite tasty. The only reason I noticed was that I saw blue around her lips and kind of panicked. Tracey then saw what it was and said it was one of Mackenzie’s non-toxic crayons. Well, today, I found pieces of blue wax in her diaper and she is none the worse for wear. I have to watch her like a hawk right now with anything she finds on the floor etc. She tries it all out. Our floors have to stay SUPER clean because of this!!!
So, I had a quote done on packing/moving us within Yellowknife. $5300. It cost the school $4500 to move me up here 5 years ago. So, it looks like I start packing as soon as I can collect boxes from the stores. I will have to get another quote from movers just for moving. The company I used said it would cost $2500 just for moving. It cost us $700 when we moved here from Ravenscourt. I know that we’ve accumulated more things but that seems outrageous!!! I need someone to come and babysit for a few days straight so that I can pack…hint hint!!!
Well, finally Edzèa is sleeping well for me tonight so I’m going to take this opportunity to read and relax. Tomorrow we get to FINALLY go the Family Centre in the morning and then I’m having some moms/babies over here for a playdate in the afternoon.
Hope you enjoy the pic of Daddy and Edzèa at bedtime. Nice legs!! This is Tim’s new way of getting out of ever having to do dishes. The baby monitor gets really quiet and I pop in and find the two of them snoozing every night. He started this routine a few weeks ago and seems to like it! One night we had Allan coming to babysit and we were waiting and waiting and waiting for Tim and then I realized he must have fallen asleep. We were a bit late for our movie!!!
A friend of mine who’s lived here for 12 years, recently compared living in Yellowknife to living on an island. It’s true. You are cut off from the rest of the world by ice/snow/water and you need a ferry or an ice road to get here year round. She said that we are all in this thing together. There is a built-in comraderie to living in a place like this. You need to be friendly to cope with the harsh winters. It’s like complaining about the ferry to your chosen island in B.C. You need to be able to joke with the person in the coffee shop line-up about the weather or you’ll feel more isolated than the weather already makes you feel. If it weren’t for the people up here, you’d want to shoot yourself!
This week, was like living on an island for Edzèa and I. We came down with a cold last week that would not let go. We didn’t leave the house until Friday morning when I had to take her to a follow-up appt at the hospital. We had ended up taking her to emergency on Thursday night because her cough was so bad that I was getting worried. It takes up to two weeks to get regular doctor’s appointments up here so when things are urgent, you go to Emergency. Not a great system. Tim had to take Edzèa there after work because I was still sick and needed some rest. It turns out that she has bronchitis and it will last two weeks. Ugh.
There was a South African woman that I knew from the Family Centre sitting in Emerg with two of her three children and we both joked that it was like a social event for us as neither of us had left our houses this week due to sick kids. There was only one doctor in Emerg and lots of people waiting and everyone chatting. At one point, a woman with her daughter who potentially had broken her foot, offered to get Edzèa and I something to eat from the cafeteria. Edzèa was sleeping in her stroller and she figured I wouldn’t want to move her. She came back with a bagel for Edzèa and wouldn’t let me pay for it. That’s Yellowknife.
Five hours later, we were told to use saline drops to clear some of her congestion and were sent on our way! Anti-climactic!
On Saturday, I just couldn’t cope with spending another entire day at home with the same TOYS, the same MUSIC, the same routine so I decided to steal one of my other Mom friends ideas…and venture out on the Ice Road to Dettah (small Aboriginal community across the lake from Yellowknife). I’d never done it before so…we packed up baby, brought some hot chocolate and mosied on down to frozen Great Slave Lake. Edzèa slept in the back and Tim and I were able to chat about our new house purchase and life in general. It was a nice break although Dettah is only 10 minutes away from Yellowknife on the Ice Road so it wasn’t a particularly long road trip but it was fun anyways. The Snow Castle was built, there were kite skiiers on the lake and skidoos. A regular weekend day in the ‘Knife. I will post some of the video footage when I get it edited. Here are some pics of our “Road Trip” fyi.
We had whitefish that we got from the Fish Barge on the lake for dinner and then crashed early as we are still sick! We are ALMOST over it.
Tim heads to Ottawa for a week tomorrow so I’m hoping that this week will go a little easier than last week. I can’t wait to get out of the house. Cabin fever mixed with sickness, lack of fresh air and too many baby games nearly drove me around the bend this week. Hopefully we’ll have our full social schedule back in the swing this week.
I was talking to my friend Helene in New York on the weekend and I mentioned that it was Spring here and she laughed. I had to explain it. I meant that the long daylight hours are beginning. That’s why it feels like Spring. The temperature certainly isn’t co-operating! -35 today. Yuck. Tim and I took Edzèa for an outing to the library this afternoon. Mommy needed new board books as she was getting sick of the repertoire at home! The Yellowknife library is not particularly inviting. I miss the West Van library with it’s interior coffee shop, great comfy seats, private carousels,courtyard garden and amazing selection. Plus the crocuses would be coming out by now and there would be no snow to be seen. Although I heard it snowed today in Vancouver…wierd!
It looks like Dad is coming in early April to paint the interior of our new house for us before we move in. YAY! Can’t wait. He expects some Char for his efforts though so we better go on a search.
That’s all for now, enjoy your “true” Spring conditions wherever you are…we’ll just appreciate that it’s ALMOST April and the snow will start melting soon. YAY!
Just a quick post to add the latest video of Edzèa playing with Mackenzie while I babysat on Thursday. Also, I’ve attached below the letter to the editor that I wrote on Friday morning which is now becoming a story in the paper. They’ve assigned a reporter to cover it.
Friday, Feb.20, 2009
Dear Editor,
This morning I headed out of my house on a very specific shopping trip to Centre Square mall. I brought my nine month-old daughter with me. She weighs twenty pounds now so I keep my fold-up airport stroller in the back of my car to cart her around in as I shop.
I was very specifically going to the Loony Loonies store at Centre Square mall to shop for a fancy dress for my daughters’ family photos on Sunday. I had already tried Walmart and Extra foods but couldn’t find anything appropriate for this occasion.
For two weeks, I had waited for a free morning to do this. We arrived at 9:30 am to find the store closed. No problem, we walked around for a short time and the owner showed up and entered the store. I thought he would take five minutes or so to get organized and open the doors. I really didn’t have anything else to shop for but I wandered through the top of the mall with my stroller waiting for the doors to open. After I knocked on the Loony Loonies store doors, the owner came out at 9:45am to tell me that he wouldn’t be opening for another ten minutes.
I wandered through Inspired looking at things while I waited. They were helpful and friendly.
When I arrived at the Loony Loonies store to shop , there were already a few other people in the store. I started to push my small stroller through the front aisle when the shop owner asked me to stop and to leave my stroller at the front. I told him that I’d rather not as my baby was nine months-old and not walking. I told him that I would have to carry her which was not convenient. He repeated that I would have to leave the stroller at the front. I’m unclear as to whether he expected me to leave the baby in it or not? He gave me no explanation as to why I was to leave the stroller at the front until I threatened to write a letter to the editor at the Yellowknifer.
I informed him that I was a teacher without a criminal record and that I was unclear about the issue with my stroller. He then said that the stroller would bump things off of the shelves.
I was quite visibly angry and feeling as though my rights/my child’s rights were being violated. I asked him for his name as I was planning on writing a letter to the editor at the Yellowknifer. He refused to give me his name or his business card and told me that it was a safety issue. He said that things would drop on to the baby in the stroller. I told him that I was a responsible adult and did not have that issue anywhere else that I shopped.
I am writing this letter to let you know that I am boycotting the Loony Loonies store in Yellowknife and would encourage others with babies to do so. If this man had attempted to give me some decent customer service and not argue with a potential customer in his store, I would have probably purchased one of his $39.99 dresses that we had been eyeing in the window. I also would have picked up some other things for my daughter’s upcoming 1st year birthday party. He has lost a customer and I am looking into filing a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
Strollers are vehicles for people who cannot walk. Some children/people cannot walk at all, some cannot walk for long distances reliably. If Loony Loonies banned wheelchairs, I can only imagine the fight he’d have on his hands. What he has right now, is a fight with an angry parent who is not going to let this go.
Sincerely,
Monique Froehler
NWTTA Member in Good Standing
Angry Parent
Here are a few pics from the past couple of days. Now that Edzèa is crawling she tends to fall asleep in the *crawl* position in her crib. It does *not* look very comfortable. See pics. Her butt is sticking up in the air and head is buried into the mattress.
She and Mackenzie fight over the Mom’s (Tracey & I). If one gets held, the other wants to be held at the same time. It’s difficult as Edzèa squirms a lot. Tomorrow I have Mackenzie and on Friday, Tracey has Edzèa while I teach at K’alemi Dene. There was an article in the paper about the principal there, Angela James, who just won Principal of the Year award for the NWT. I only work at the great schools!
This weekend, we are going house hunting and having our professional family photos taken. Looking forward to another weekend without illness!
Edzèa is crawling everywhere now but is generally unadventurous. The worst thing she has been interested in is the toilet paper roll. She has no interest so far in eating everything she finds on the floor or trying to pull on electrical cords. She likes to go up to people/animals and give them little cuddles. If there are books/paper around that is her big weakness so overall very tame.
Our main challenge at the moment is eating. She only wants to feed herself which is an absolute disaster and is being very picky about food. I’m not used to this as she used to be great. Yams, sweet potatoes, pasta, grapes are out. Avocadoes, bread, cream cheese, yoghurt, bananas are in. I’m going to try salmon tomorrow to get some protein into her. I’m also going to make her mini-muffins as she seems to like sweet breads. Any suggestions anyone???
Here are some miscellaneous photos from last week. Also, a video of the Little Strawberry eating strawberries.
Well, Tracey informed me last night that although Edzèa and I had missed two classes of Kindermusic due to illness that our teacher did *not* want to *overwhelm* us so she didn’t pass along any homework for the class to Tracey for us…See for yourself if we need more practice…Here are pics of the girls and then a little clip of the girls in action.
Edzèa (8 months) and friend, Nathalie (1 year old) competing for the cell phone at storytime/playtime sessions at the Literacy Council. See for yourself-one person finally gave up!! Also, a pic of her with the drum at Kindermusic and another one with her new balaclava made by Grandma Froehler.
