So it's been busy here at home since we got back... at least for me.  First Ryan came down with some stomach bug and was throwing up, etc.  I'll spare you the details, but poor little guy... While he didn't seem extremely uncomfortable, he just wasn't his normal smiley little self and was quite fussy.  Just when Ryan got over the bug (Saturday), Steve came down with it (Sunday).  So then I had to switch gears and take care of Steve... well, at least make sure he had a full cup of tea... and (gasp) cook dinner!!  All that going up and down the stairs (yeah, he was really sick... he was in bed, not downstairs watching TV) was pretty hard on my knees, so I've been downing the Advil to counter that.  But of course, because I'm breastfeeding still, I keep that to one a day.  So I've been busy!

Ryan is definitely over the bug and back to his happy self (Steve, not yet, he's still suffering, yuck).  In the last few weeks, Ryan's started to babble... you know, the shrieking/talking to themselves thing that babies do.  It's quite funny... he wakes up from his nap, then talks to himself for a few minutes before making his "yo mum... get me outta here and let me play" yell.  He is also quite fascinated with his hands lately.  He turns them back and forth slowly and stares at them in wonder.  Again, quite cute.

Barb and Emily came over yesterday, and I got to go for a swim!  It sure is nice to be able to have a bit of exercise and a few moments to myself.  They've said they should be able to come over once a week during the day for the next little while, so I'm looking forward to that.  And once Emily gets more comfortable with Ryan, we'll be able to have her babysit while we go out with Barb and Pete!  Again, really looking forward to that.

Hmmm, what else?  Well, I'm busy searching for child care... day home, nanny, whatever... So far, I haven't found any day homes in the Dalhousie area that are accepting children under 2, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find one somewhere along my route to work.  Barb mentioned an agency that inspects/recommends day homes to parents, so I gave them a call, and in May, I'll be registering with them and I'll get a list of approved day homes to check out. 

That's about it for now!

Christine

PS  Here's one of my fave photos of Ryan...

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. That's disturbing.
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' beside those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.

X 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
X 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
X 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
X 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (only little bits - not enough to warrant an X)
X 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
X 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell --
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
X 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
X 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
X 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
X 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
X 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
X 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
X 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
X 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
X 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
X 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
X 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol
X 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
X 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
X 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
X 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Um this is technically part of #33)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
X 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
X 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
X 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
X 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
X 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
X 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
X 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
X 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
X 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
X 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
X 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
X 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
X 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
X 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
X 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
X 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
X 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
X 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville--
X 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
X 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
X 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
X 80 Possession - AS Byatt
X 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
X 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
X 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
X 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
X 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
X 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 51 / 100 - is that a pass? ;-)

For my bookclub friends... maybe we should select some of these for our next few books - some ones I've always wanted to read, but haven't got around to on here?

Christine

I've been using Facebook the last little while to post photos, etc, but I think I'll try going back to this one for now, since there is all that hullaballoo about what FB owns and what it doesn't.  Just going to put the photos here and post a link on FB.

What's new with us?  Well, Ryan is going great guns... fat in all the right places and doing all sorts of interesting things everyday.  Activity of the day today... really sharp piercing cries/shrieks... more of joy than anything else... just to get my attention.  He's still a bit underweight, but he's also a bit smaller than many 6 month olds, so it all balances out.  He seemed to enjoy our trip to the UK... his cousins played with him, he met all sorts of other people and he got lots of hugs and kisses from Grandma and Grandad.  He's almost over his jet-lag which is a good thing.  He was waking up and/or fussing at the weirdes times since our return on Saturday, but last night he slept right through... not even a peep.  And he's been napping well today, so fingers crossed, he's sorted.

Steve is busy back at work.  He had to work Family Day on Monday, but didn't have to go in until noon, so that was not so bad.  Busy as ever there!

Me?  Well, aside from activities with Ryan, I've got my Optionelle Spring line to keep me busy.  I have a few parties to set up this week now that I'm back.  And I've got all the fashions this time around, and the accessories too, so I should have a good season!  Also looking around at daycare and nanny options for my return to my "real" work in July/August.

Oh... back to Ryan... we are watching him for signs of measles and/or chicken pox.  On the flight back, there was a child with blotches/spots on their face... not sure why the airline let the family on the plane, but they did... and if it is measles, it is highly contagious and we all were breathing recirculated air for 9 hours... great...  Anyway, we've got another 2.5 weeks of watching... yeah, it can take that long to incubate.  Darn airline... sure wish Ryan was a little older and was able to have gotten his MMR/chicken pox vaccines.  Crossing my fingers that he is going to be okay!

Ciao for now,

Christine