typealice

Well, as you have noticed, I’ve changed the layout. I have been comfortable staying with old versions of WordPress (the software) and so I haven’t felt like changing the theme because they wouldn’t work properly, but then finally gave in and upgraded the software and wanted an updated theme that I could play around with a bit more. So now I have “recent entries” and “recent comments” sections as well as updated links and an Etsy widgit.

Hope you like it.

—

This conversation took place while I was cooking dinner:

Clive: How long until our next baby?
Me: I don’t know, a long time.
Clive: Are you pregnant now?
Me: Not that I know of, why?
Clive: I dunno, I just thought you were.
Me: Uh, do you think I look fat?
Clive: No, quite the opposite actually [blah blah my stomach looks really flat blah blah]
Me: Well, why do you think I am pregnant?
Clive: It’s just a feeling…

and then, after more pestering:

Clive: Well, you got pregnant the last time we had sex!

Ooooooh diss!

He was too lazy to go to the dollar store (there’s no way I’m paying full dollar for a “feeling” of his for a brand name test) to get a pregnancy test. I still haven’t even gotten my period yet (it’s been since December 06!), so I really don’t think I am pregnant (though there always is a possibility, I suppose).

—

Clive and I have managed to break our first bones within a week of one another. Last Wednesday while playing goalie position at hockey practice, Clive got a puck under his glove (or something) and within a couple of hours it’d bruised and although he could still bend it, we realized that one of the bones had likely been fractured. He’s been wearing a splint and otherwise has been fine (besides having an excuse not to change as many diapers), but the bruising was pretty intense.

I said, “you know, you’re going to have to move out if you lose your nail.” Without argument, he said, “I know.”

Then this morning as I was going into the bathroom to wash my face before driving Clive to work, I somehow managed to step on the bathmat with one foot and slide the bathmat with the other foot causing a large ripple in the material which I stubbed my toes on, resulting in a loud SNAP and then a shooting pain in my middle toe on my left foot.

Bruising started almost immediately, and within two and a half hours, my toe looked like this:

A few hours later, the bruising worsened:

And by the end of the day, looked like this.

It hurts to walk, and Ash has already come down on my toe with all of the weight from the top part of his body. He’s a menace lately and yesterday he even bit me on the shoulder during a nice hug I was giving him. He changed overnight and went from a darling little baby to this whining toddler who isn’t happy with anything. Maybe it’s a phase. Maybe it’s a phase that’ll last for the next five years. I’m scared.

—

Last but not least: I cannot get over how much Ash looks like me when I was a baby. I’m not sure if you can grasp it, especially those of you who don’t know him in person, but these pictures could be of Ash. They are so, so, so eerily similar. I have flashes of what it’ll be like when he’s a teenager and looks exactly like his mother and his friends make fun of him.

It’s SO WEIRD! I love genetics.

Here’s something I don’t understand: people who don’t care about the environment. Now, I don’t expect everyone in the world to be a composting, recycling, cloth diapering, all-natural cleaning products, plastic-avoiding person (like I am), but the people who really, honestly don’t give a shit about doing ANYTHING? I don’t get you. How are you not racked with guilt? How do you dispose of your diapers and buy water bottles and use plastic grocery bags and just not care? Fuck the Earth! I’m all about CONVENIENCE!

Is it the money? Do you choose your ocean-polluting laundry detergent over a safer, biodegradable kind because it’s less expensive (it’s not always)? Do you choose to use disposable diapers because they’re cheaper (uh, they’re totally not- there’s not even a comparison)? What about your household cleaning products… oh man, the list goes on.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to be a little more eco-friendly, and it really doesn’t cost a lot more either. It’s just about making different choices and sometimes changing the stores you shop in.

Ahhh, Wal Mart. You know, overall, I don’t really have a big problem with Wal Mart. I sometimes shop there for sewing supplies and we even bought an all-natural, 100% recycled mattress yesterday! BUT! Oh the absolute crap that they carry for parents. You go to the baby section and you can find almost everything you could possibly need for the first 6-12 months of the baby’s life if you want to be one of THOSE parents. The formula feeding, sposie diapers, plastic toys, ugly and polluted clothing, canned baby food parents. For the parents who don’t do any independant research, Wal Mart is probably their store of choice. Why go anywhere else?

These types of parents are right up there with the ones who don’t even try to breastfeed because it’s “gross” or whatever. Not even once! “Ewww! My tits are leaking!” was something I once read in a blog by a new mom. I could have throttled her.

…

I’m not sure what kind of parent I would have been if it wasn’t for a few key moms who I spoke to online. I’d never heard of co-sleeping before getting pregnant, certainly not with a newborn anyway, and the only thing I knew was that I was going to breastfeed. People tend to be clueless about pregnancy (I remember one newly pregnant woman asking what amniotic fluid was once in a forum I used to go to), it’s such a major thing with so many details you should pay attention to (advice I gave to a friend of mine whose wife just got pregnant, “For now, make sure she’s taking her prenatal vitamins, especially extra folic acid. Make sure she doesn’t eat a lot of tuna (too much mercury), that she doesn’t go near (used) cat litter, raw fish, unpasteurized milk or milk products, or deli meats. All are really horrible for pregnant women and can cause birth defects (or worse).”

Thanks to Rebecca, Ashley, Corrie and Kelly Marie, I am a far better parent than I likely would have been otherwise. I’d never heard of the term Attachment Parenting, but I basically just follow my instincts and it tends to fall under the guidelines that the Sears doctors write and talk about anyway. If I’d been surrounded by other kinds of parents (ie- the ones at the babycenter.com forums) who believe in plastic, CIO, sposies and cribs, I probably would feel pretty alone.

What I’m always surprised at are the amount of people who rally around other similar people who aren’t very “green” like in this comment section of another one of Sundry’s posts. It’s all “YOU GO GIRL! SCREW THE EARTH! Those lame eco-friendly people are so fucking judgmental!” And by making fun of us- um, aren’t you being judgmental too? Like one charming commenter said: “The Green Trolls (hee! Get it?) are more obnoxious on the internet than the Militant Nursing Advocates. And that says a lot.”

If it wasn’t for people talking about the Earth outside of their comfortable Earth-friendly circles (which is like preaching to the choir- why even bother?), there would be much fewer people with the know-how of what is good and what is bad. Some of it people don’t even realize- like did you know that fabric softener is bad? Do you still use it? (We don’t.) Do you care?

I totally don’t expect people to go to the extreme of being eco-friendly, as much as I’d love them to. People are selfish, people are lazy, people are broke, people are just apathetic. I’m not going to think you’re a horrible person, but I am going to wonder WHY you live the way you do. Why you think that you don’t have an impact, when you really do! Why you’re teaching your children a pretty bad way of living when you don’t have to. It’s about making simple choices.

Ash had his first temper tantrum yesterday, the first of many, many more to come, I’m sure. He wanted to bring a glass of water that had been sitting on the bedside table onto the bed to play with, and I said no firmly and he threw himself onto the bed, face first and cried (tears and everything!) as if he’d been seriously injured. It was hard not to laugh. I cuddled him and then offered him his Kleen Kanteen and it was better. My child is growing up.

This has been the fastest summer of my entire life. It’s almost September! I cannot even believe it. Before you know it, it’s going to be snowing again and I’m just. not. ready. Life is going far too quickly. It’s split up between nap times. My day is as follows:

6:30am Ash wakes up. I take him to the potty for his morning pee (and poop, most of the time) and then we play and read books.
7:30am We wake up Clive, and I go back to sleep while they play until 9:00
9:00am Clive leaves for work and Ash and I eat breakfast.
9:30am Ash goes down for his first nap and I clean and use the internet
10:30-11:00am Ash wakes up
11:00-2:00pm We play, go to the park, run errands, hang out with Ambera, do whatever
2:00pm Ash goes for his second nap
3:00-3:30 Ash wakes up and we play, go to the park, run errands, hang out inside, do whatever
5:00pm I cook dinner for Clive, Ash and I
6:15pm Clive gets home and plays with Ash, we eat dinner, give Ash a bath
7:00pm Ash’s bedtime and I work, watch a movie or TV and relax
11:00-11:30pm I go to bed

Last night I went out after dark to pick up Clive from work and it occurred to me that it was one of the only times that I’ve gone out after dark. Seriously- I can count the number of times on one hand (maybe both of them if I’m lucky) since he was born almost a year ago. He’s overall a good sleeper, compared to other kids, but he still stirs in the evening and will only let me comfort him, which means going out is impossible. I went to the gym one evening in the spring and when I came home he’d been BAWLING for half an hour or more, and my Mommy Guilt stopped me from going out again in case it happened again.

There’s only a few things I miss about going out at night, one of them is drinking a pitcher of beer on a deck outside of a restaurant, taking a long walk in the evening after a hot summer day and feeling the heat rise off the pavement, and going to the odd house party.

—

Clive and I are on the hunt for another apartment. The one we’re in right now is a bit too small. I’d love to find a three-bedroom so that we could use one as an office, one for the bedroom and the other one for Ash’s toys. By next summer we’ll be desperate for a yard for Ash to play in (right now going to the nearby parks suffices), and I want a bigger kitchen and it must have a washer and dryer. I’ve been looking for months and haven’t found anywhere that’s comparable to where we’re living right now, especially in this neighbourhood where I also want to stay because my sister is 1.5 blocks away from me.

—

I’m going to be an aunt again! Clive’s sister called me last night and told me she’s pregnant with her third child! We’re going to Toronto in the spring to visit everyone and the new baby. I’m so thrilled!

I called our local cable/internet/telephone provider today and got our cable cut off. I have hardly turned on the TV all summer and it just didn’t seem worth the extra expense now that my maternity leave is over and I’m left on my own to keep up with my bills and I hardly have any income at all. I don’t advertise for my slings, I depend only on word of mouth, so I don’t sell a lot of them. Halifax is also a pretty small city and there’s another company that’s got her slings in most children-oriented stores up and down the coastline on this side of the province. Good for her, bad for me. She and I actually went to the same high school, coincidentally, but there is one big difference between us: she’s not even a mom! Pshaw! There are lots of pictures of her on her website and she’s carrying a doll in each one of them.

Anyway, so the television is gone, which is good (we download all of our shows anyway), and it brings down the monthly bill from $135 to $88.

Clive and I live off of cash, advice taken from Till Debt Do Us Part. We have glass jars on our counter for Fuel, Fun [which is always empty] and Food. We keep costs as minimal as possible, spending an embarrassing $300/month on food (that also includes household needs and at least one restaurant trip), nothing on fun and allocate $50/month for fuel (which I know we more than double because Clive plays hockey once a week outside of the city, which probably adds another $40-$50 to his fuel budget and I travel to see my mom at least twice a month which adds another $40 to my fuel costs).

Ash still doesn’t cost us a lot of money. We cloth diaper so we don’t spend a cent there, we don’t buy new clothes, we do buy him organic fruits and vegetables, but he still doesn’t eat a lot so that’s probably only a couple of dollars a week, we don’t buy him new toys (I did buy a $1 cloth doll today that was second hand and will be used for sling demos as well), and he’s happy to empty out the stove drawer of all its pots, bang on my bongo drums, help me with laundry, go for walks, and read books all day (which we buy second hand for $0.25 each at the local Salvation Army).

I’ve decided to stay at home for as long as I can. I haven’t even began to research day cares. It’s not a smart decision, financially speaking, AT ALL, but I can’t imagine having to leave him yet. I’m just not ready. Maybe I’ll work again when he’s two, before having the next baby (which I’d like to start trying for when he is two), maybe I won’t have to, if G Slings really takes off, which I hope it will.

My sister says she has no idea how we’re able to spend so little on groceries, whereas I look at her and how much money she and her boyfriend spend and I have no idea how they’re able to EAT that many groceries. I’ll end this entry with a question for you readers: How much money do you (think) you spend on groceries each month? How many people does that amount feed? How to you budget for your food, if you do at all? I’m really curious.

Within a recent article about a child dying from Shaken Baby Syndrome, they list the following steps:

How to deal with crying
Steps to take if a baby is crying and you are getting flustered:

• Lay the baby on its back in its crib
• Put the crib rails up
• Leave the room
• Close the door
• Distract yourself with relaxing activities for a few minutes
• Call a friend or relative to take over if necessary

Source: Dr. R. Daryl Steiner, Akron (Ohio) Children’s Hospital

___

WICKED, CNN! Great advice! Let’s ignore our children instead of figuring out what’s actually making them cry in the first place.

I can totally understand the frustration from a crying baby (Ash cried a lot in his first couple of months because of gas issues and us not figuring out how to burp him properly), and just NEEDING IT TO STOP RIGHT NOW, but really? Closing the door on the child and going into a different room? Is that REALLY the best option?

I mean, I guess it is if you’re seriously thinking about harming your child, but there’s got to be a different and better way to do things, right?

Dear Ash,

You’re 11 months old today! HOLY COW. This has been a crazy month, one where the focus was mostly on your father and I- who tied the knot. I’d been planning our wedding for about four months during your naps and when you go to bed for the night, and the day was everything I’d hoped for and more. Now we’re an official family!

You’re changing daily now, and I can hardly keep up. You’re growing leaps and bounds mentally these days, and you learn new sounds and words and you understand me more and more every day. It’s absolutely amazing to watch, and it makes me so excited for the day and I’m really going to have to stop swearing so much. I knew this day would come, but I’m not sure I’m ready for it!

At the beginning of your eleventh month it was very hot at night and I sent your father to buy a fan for the bedroom so you didn’t get too warm. It was love at first sight, with you and that fan. Oh man, you loved looking at it, feeling the air, and when I would then blow on your face to show you what a fan does, you giggled like crazy. Within a couple of days of me blowing on your face, you were also blowing in response to my question, “What does a fan say?” Now when I turn on the fan, you blow back at it. It’s very entertaining to watch.

Throughout the month you’ve also learned how to “mooo” when asked what a cow says, and now you even recognize cows in books and will moo when you see them. Within the past couple of days you will also make “monster” noises when you want to play Baby/Mama/Papa Monster (a throat guttural noise), or when asked what a monster says. I keep expecting you to come out and meow or woof or choo-choo when I ask you what a cat/dog/train says- maybe by next week.

Also within the past couple of days, you’ve started saying, “beh” about everything and anything. Dog? Beh. Cat? Beh. Telephone? Beh. Good night. Beh. Beh Beh Beh Beh Beh. Look at that! Beh. It’s quite comical, actually.

You haven’t really picked up on sign language very well, despite your dad and I being consistent with it since you were five or six months old. You have, however, created your own sign language for brushing your teeth. You take a loose fist and move it up and down over your mouth, which is actually quite similar to the actual sign. You love brushing your teeth, so we take turns doing it- I do it properly for you, and then you take control and basically just bite your toothbrush. Brushing your top teeth is a bit hard though because you tilt your head back, so I have to put your up against the wall so you can’t tilt too far back.

You had your first (three) haircuts this month. I trimmed around your ears before the wedding, your bangs one day, and then when it was pointed out that you had a bit of the dreaded mullet, your father trimmed the back of your hair while I pinned you down/distracted you. Your hair is still very long, but here’s what it looked like before I cut your bangs.

The biggest event of the month was your parents wedding, of course. I was a bit scared about your nap schedule being wonky (which is was) making you grumpy and not very fun to be around, but you were actually quite okay! You loved being around all of these new people and in a new place. You made friends with everyone who tried, especially your extended family who were visiting! It was great to see you with your grandmother LaLa and Papa John, your aunt and uncle Tina and Brian and your cousins Myah and Caleb, and even your great aunt and second cousins- Amanda, Rebecca and Sarah. Everyone just loved you. I wish that there was a way to see everyone more often. I feel sad that they don’t get to see you as much as my side of the family does. Especially for Tina who cried when she was saying her goodbyes to you. Plans are in the works to go to Ontario next spring or summer to visit everyone. We’ll go before you turn two so that we don’t have to pay for your plane ticket, haha. Just think of how different you’ll be the next time they see you! Luckily we have the internet- they get to see you whenever they want to.

The wedding was great, and you and your grandmother were the first people down the aisle. I called her the morning of the wedding to ask if she’d do us the honour of bringing you, the biggest love of our lives, down before anyone else, and of course she accepted. You were dressed like the rest of the men in the wedding party- an untucked white dress shirt, grey pants and bare feet. You were so beautiful. I can’t say you paid much attention to the wedding ceremony itself, you were in the front row flirting with people behind you and distracting us with your squeals of delight. When the Justice of the Peace brought you up in the ceremony, it was the only time our eyes welled with tears. You are our pride and joy, and the thing that binds your father and me together for the rest of our lives. How lucky we are.

I, no, WE love you!

The day after the wedding you took your first steps! Marc, Nicole, your father and I were sitting on the deck of our cottage, encouraging/tricking you to walk by yourself, and you did it! We couldn’t convince you to do it again, you much prefer to be on your hands and knees (which is just fine with me!), but you did it. All of us were so proud. Even though all of us were taking turns trying to get you to walk between us, you ended up walking between me and your dad.

We’re a great team, the three of us. Every day you learn something new and every morning I get so excited to see how you’ve changed overnight and how you’ll change throughout the day. I can hardly keep up. Feel free to slow down a little, everything is moving a bit too fast and I feel like I’m forgetting everything. I want to take in as much as I can.

You make me appreciate every single day.

Love,
Mama

Warning: Preachy, judgmental post below.

One of my favorite mommybloggers recently wrote about her six-month old son still waking in the middle of the night (from what I can tell, he’s only waking once- at 3am). She wants him to stop waking up so that she can get a good night’s sleep. She’s a working mom and also has a two year old, so her situation is much different than mine- I’m a stay at home mom who works from home doing odd things like sewing slings. The thought of dealing with a toddler and a baby at the same time literally makes me not want to have another one because of how tired I’d feel all the time. Seriously.

Anyway, so she asks for advice. And 50% of the advice she gets is to let her baby CIO (Cry It Out). I am so anti-CIO it scares me. I laid awake last night thinking of all of those poor babies who are left alone to cry while their parents put pillows over their ears or put them in a different room in their cribs and turn off the baby monitors so they don’t have to hear the wails.

Crying is the only verbal form of communication that babies have and they are being ignored.

One person even commented that she let her baby cry so long that the child ended up throwing up. The “concerned parent” she is, she asked her doctor’s advice and the doctor said that IT WAS OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!! What the hell kind of a medical system offers doctors with that kind of belief??

THROWING UP DUE TO EXCESSIVE CRYING IS NOT OKAY AND IS NOT NORMAL.

So, I wrote a quick reply and voiced my opinion that CIO is child abuse and that the person should seriously consider switching doctors and my comment was deleted. I was not very tactful nor political in my comment because I feel so strongly about CIO/Ferber methods that it’s hard for me to contain myself. It’s hard for me not to write line after line after line of curse words and insults towards parents who try to sleep train their infants.

Listen. Parenting is hard. Harder than you imagine it will be while your belly is growing or you’re even considering having a child. There’s one thing that you must understand: babies are not trying to inconvenience you. When they wake up in the middle of the night it’s probably because they’re lonely, wet or hungry. It’s not because they’re these evil little creatures with the goal of interuppting your REM sleep. They have basic needs that do not go away once the lights go off for the night, or when they reach 12lbs, like one mother in the same comment section wrote (on the advice of yet another doctor, go figure).

Sure, it can be frustrating to be woken up in the middle of the night- I’ve been there. Ash still doesn’t sleep a whole night through; he goes down at 7, wakes briefly once between 7-11, wakes for a nurse and pee on the potty at 11, and then another nurse at 3am, but he’s right beside me in bed and I just roll over and he latches on and five minutes later we’re both asleep again. And I’m proud to say that Ash has never, not ONCE, cried at night. Not when he was brand new, not at six months old, never, ever ever. We also do not allow him to cry during the day- there’s no need for it. If he starts to cry, I figure out what he’s attempting to communicate, fix it, and we go about our day. Why would I possibly let him cry? It goes against everything I am as a person and everything I am as an instinctual animal.

Letting babies CIO is BAD FOR THEM, physically and psychologically.

Research suggests that allowing a baby to “cry it out” can cause brain damage.

Some experts warn that allowing a baby to “cry it out” causes extreme distress to the baby. And such extreme distress in a newborn has been found to block the full development of certain areas of the brain and causes the brain to produce extra amounts of cortisol which can be harmful.

From here.

and

The pair examined childrearing practices here and in other cultures and say the widespread American practice of putting babies in separate beds — even separate rooms — and not responding quickly to their cries may lead to incidents of post-traumatic stress and panic disorders when these children reach adulthood.

The early stress resulting from separation causes changes in infant brains that makes future adults more susceptible to stress in their lives, say Commons and Miller.

“Parents should recognize that having their babies cry unnecessarily harms the baby permanently,” Commons said. “It changes the nervous system so they’re overly sensitive to future trauma.”

From here.

Please stop abandoning your children. Please attend to their basic needs. Please be patient with them and love them and stop ignoring them. CIO may “work” because the children give up on you. What are you teaching them? Love and nuture them, please stop treating them like inconveniences.

The Day Before

Clive and I arrived at the cottage on Saturday, the day before the wedding, where we set up as much as we could. The chairs and tables and snow kone machine were delivered on time, and we unloaded several carloads of food and supplies. I was lucky to have massive help from our friend Yuri, who was the most organized male in the group (all of the men were staying at the cottage that night, as the women were heading back into town to spend the night at my mother’s house. The men would be in charge of the last details- setting up the cookie station, the tables with table cloths and centerpieces and the ceremony location with chairs in the correct places. They also had to dress themselves and, as it turned out, get their hair cut by one another.

Preparation

My preparation started before 7am, when Ash woke me up earlier than I’d have liked him to. My hair appointment was at 8am, and my sister came along to see for herself what I had been warning her about for several weeks- the absolute weirdest hair salon in the entire world.

It literally hasn’t been updated since he started the business in the late 60s. It’s got a gold sparkle pole. It has hair dryer seats with ash trays in the arms. It smells like cigarette smoke (because he smokes inside the building all day long). The hairdresser is about 70 years old and walks with two canes and takes his prescription medication halfway through the appointments. He charged me $19 for the 2.5 hour appointment, plus $6 for the serum he used to do my hair. He washed my hair, put some sort of serum in it, put it in rollers, put me under the dryers for an hour, back-brushed my hair and then styled it. It looked absolutely bizarre when I was in anything but my wedding dress, and I still think the hairstyle looks better in pictures than it did in real life. It was huge and fuzzy- not hard from lots of hairspray. I was really happy.

After my hair appointment was over, I rushed home, and only had an hour and a half to get ready and get out of the house. My best friend from university- Lisa, my sister, mother, step father and Ash also all had to get ready, so the house was a flurry of activity, not the relaxed, champagne-sipping morning most brides envision. Ambera laced me up, I did my own makeup outside of my eyeshadow, we loaded the rest of the food into the cars and rushed to the location (40 minutes away) with five minutes to spare before the wedding was supposed to start.

It took another twenty minutes before I walked down the stairs, my aisle, because of tardy guests.

The Ceremony

I walked down the aisle without incident, no slipping, even though a couple of other people had problems, including my brother’s on-again-off-again girlfriend who bit it on her way down, and flashed my guests with her panty-less self. I learned this wonderful fact as we signed the marriage license. The details of the ceremony are fuzzy- Clive and I admitted to one another that we both had a hard time concentrating on what our Justice of the Peace was saying (she’d previously sent the wedding script), and I only screwed up what I was supposed to say once- when I completely stopped paying attention and focused on whether or not Clive and I were supposed to be holding hands or not. I had her repeat the line where I was supposed to say something like, “I, Gillian M*** E**** Hyde…” such a simple line to screw up on, everyone laughed including me.

Clive kept eye contact with me for most of the ceremony- I found it hard to stare back at him for the entire time. Neither of us cried, but when she said this:

These are the hands of your best friend that will work alongside yours, as together you build your future. These are the hands that will passionately love you and cherish you through the years, and with the slightest touch, will comfort you like no other. These are the hands that will hold you when fear or grief fills your mind. These are the hands that will countless times wipe the tears from your eyes - tears of sorrow, and tears of joy. These are the hands that will hold your children and help you to hold your family together as one. These are the hands that will give you strength when you need it. And lastly, these are the hands that when aged, will still be reaching for yours, still giving you the same unspoken tenderness with just a touch.

Clive’s eyes welled up, and seeing that, so did mine. It was also hard to hold back the tears when she mentioned our beautiful baby, Ash.

The ceremony was short and sweet, and we were announced as, Mr. and Mrs. Clive Mathias!

The Party

After the ceremony was over, Clive and I went back up to the cottage and met our guests as they walked up the stairs after us. A short couple of speeches were made (my mom, Clive’s sister and us), and people were invited to change into comfortable clothes, grab something to eat and enjoy the surroundings and the lake.

The reception went smoothly, my brother and his friend were AMAZING with the food (both of them professional chefs), there was plenty of wine and beer to go around, snow kones, six kinds of homemade cookies, lots of salads, burgers, shish kabobs and music- until…

The power went out.

And stayed out for well over two hours.

Luckily, outside of the toilet not working (we had an outhouse though), and the snow kone machine stopping working and there being no music, there wasn’t any other repercussions. And no one really seemed to notice, anyway- so I didn’t care.

We cut the cake around six, and people started to filter out shortly thereafter. We had a nice closeknit group of about a dozen people to share in a bon fire with s’mores and fireworks to end the night. There weren’t too many super-drunken people, but the ones who were very drunk were entertaining to the rest of us.

Clive and I went to the cottage for the evening around 11, opened our lovely presents and then well. Ya know.

We woke up the next morning with my hair as a completely separate identity, and then headed to brunch with our families at a local hotel/restaurant.

All in All

The day was great. The weather was perfect. The food and drink were great. People did exactly what I hoped they’d do- gather on the lawns, swim, paddle boat, chill out in a very relaxed atmosphere. There were a couple of small hiccups (opposite rings given to us during the ceremony, me forgetting the lines, not having napkins handed out during the cake dessert, people needing to leave earlier than I wanted them to, not having enough time for all the guests- including my mother, sadly, the power outage, and the best man barging into the bridal cottage before 6am to crash- leaving me grumpy), but nothing that could ruin the day. The pictures look great so far, and we haven’t even seen the ones that were taken by our professional photographer.

The guests were wonderful. I was so happy to see the people who came, words cannot even express.

Clive looked amazing. We read our vows to one another and made the JoP cry. We have our baby boy and we’re so happy, and now married!!

Tomorrow’s the big day! I think I’ve had three hours of sleep in the past four days, but I feel good and things are coming together and there are so many lovely people around and everything feels perfect and right and I cannot wait until tomorrow.

Wish me luck! Tomorrow I’ll be marrying the man I love, the father of my child.